Julia de León

Dr. de León obtained her Ph.D. in Astrophysics (with Honours) in 2009 at the University of La Laguna (ULL), in Tenerife, Spain. She has 10 years of postdoctoral experience in the study of physical and compositional properties of minor bodies of the Solar System, in particular, near-earth asteroids (NEAs). She has an interdisciplinary curriculum, with expertise in fields such as planetary geology, petrology, and geochemistry, as well as the formation of crystalline structures of minerals, gained through fruitful international collaborations with worldwide recognized experts in all those fields. Dr. de León is currently leading the research line related to the characterization of NEAs at the IAC, in particular, those that are potential targets for spacecraft and those considered as potentially hazardous for the Earth (PHAs). In this sense, she has been actively involved in space missions during the last decade: she was member of the ESA Rosetta mission, the proposed ESA Marco Polo, MarcoPoloR, CASTAway and AIM missions; she is currently official member of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission and collaborator of the JAXA Hayabusa 2 mission; she also one of the chairs of the Remote Observations working group of the ESA Hera mission, and she is involved in both NASA Lucy and Psyche future missions. Dr. de Léon has published more than 50 papers in international refereed journals (h=18), including two book chapters and one book, and has more than 100 contributions presented in national and international meetings (six invited talks, two reviews).