After graduating in 1992 (Biochemistry), I enrolled at the University of León (Spain), completed my PhD degree in 2003 and was awarded the prize of best PhD thesis of the year. During this first period of my career the main focus of my research was the biosynthetic pathways of secondary metabolites. As the direct result of the PhD work, 8 papers were published, including one describing the first designed polyene metabolite obtained by targeted genetic manipulation of a microbial biosynthetic gene cluster (Chemistry & Biology, 2007). Following the completion of my PhD studies, I gained post-doctoral experience working in several projects in Spain, France and Portugal. I integrated projects that ranged from fundamental EU-funded to industrially-driven research and explored different microbiology-related issues. In 2007, I secured competitive funding that allowed me to start my own independent research line focused on the molecular networks that govern secondary metabolism in Streptomyces. Obtaining competitive funding, together with my scientific competence, allowed me to attract students and establish my own independent research team. Up to 2013, I had supervised (or co-supervised) several undergraduate students, 6 MSc, 4 PhD students and a post-doc fellow. Competitive funding as principal investigator had continuity in 2011 at the second call of the EU FP7 ERA-IB program (165K €). Networking has been a key factor in my evolution as a researcher. I established several international collaborations with recognized scientists of the field such as A. Manteca from Oviedo (Spain) or A. Luzhetskyy from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research (Saarland, Germany), among others. The work developed between 2007-2015 reflected in a publication record of 20 papers, including the first publication as senior author (PLOS One, 2011). In 2015, I decided to pursue my interest on synthetic biology and shifted my research line to applying the concepts of synthetic biology to microbial secondary metabolism. My networking efforts, together with the scientific leadership qualities, led to the successful application as the consortium coordinator, of the 2M€ ERA-IB EU-funded TACRODRUGS project. With this project I was able to kick-off and fund a research line focused on the development of molecular tools for the production of natural products. Although adjusting my research line reflected in a lower publication record during this period, the work developed during this last years has already reflected in the publication of 3 manuscripts as senior author in 2020 (Metabolic Engineering, Antibiotics and Scientific Reports). By February 2021, I have published 32 papers with over 1017 citations and an h-index of 18. Of those, 26 papers were published in journals ranked in the first quartile of their subject category (JCR) including 8 as senior author.