This morning, the Minister of Science, Universities and Innovation and President of Ikerbasque, Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias, presided over the award ceremony recognizing three women conducting research in the Basque Country: María José Sanz, Aran García-Lekue, and Amaia Arruabarrena. The event also featured Fernando Cossío, Scientific Director of Ikerbasque, and was attended by representatives from universities and research centers across Euskadi.
The aim of this recognition is to highlight the work of women researchers in the Basque Country, serving as role models and inspiration for new generations of female scientists. Accordingly, the awards honor an entire scientific career, leadership in a research field, and an outstanding contribution by a young researcher.
For the 2025 edition, the following researchers have been recognized:
✓ Advanced, recognition for an entire research career:
o Mª José Sanz, Scientific Director of BC3, Basque Centre for Climate Change.
✓ Consolidator, recognition for a leading researcher in her field:
o Aran García-Lekue, Ikerbasque Research Professor at DIPC, Donostia International Physics Center.
✓ Starting, recognition for an outstanding contribution by a young researcher:
o Amaia Arruabarrena, Ikerbasque Researcher and Ramón y Cajal Fellow at UPV/EHU.
To select the recognized researchers, Ikerbasque conducted a bibliometric analysis of scientific production data and highlighted the most notable recent contributions from women researchers in the Basque Country. The evaluation committee focused its discussions on a final selection of 17 researchers across the three levels mentioned above and emphasized the high scientific standard of the candidates in all categories. According to the committee, this reflects the great potential of science carried out by women in Euskadi.
Annual recognitions
This initiative is part of Ikerbasque's Equality and Diversity Plan, which aims to be a social benchmark in equality and diversity. Among its various actions is the annual recognition of women researchers.
Advanced: Mª José Sanz (1963)
She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Valencia and completed her postdoctoral training at Arizona State University. She is a specialist in the effects of air pollution on vegetation, the carbon cycle, and the scientific foundations of climate change policy related to land use and ecosystems. During her time at the CEAM Foundation, she combined her research with stays at the US Forest Service in Riverside (USA), the JRC in Ispra, the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, and Penn State University. Since 1992, she has held various research positions at the CEAM Foundation (Valencia). From 2007 to 2011, she worked at the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Bonn as a Senior Officer. She was Director of the Climate Change Research Institute in Zaragoza in 2011. Between 2012 and 2015, she coordinated the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) at the FAO (Rome). She has collaborated with international institutions such as the World Bank, the Green Climate Fund, UNEP, UNDP, and the Inter-American Development Bank. She has contributed to multiple reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2000—including all methodology reports, one special report, and one assessment report—which led to her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (as part of the IPCC). Since 2016, she has been an Ikerbasque Research Professor and Scientific Director of BC3. In 2018, she was awarded the Distinction for Scientific Merit by the Generalitat Valenciana. In 2023, she was appointed a member of the IPCC Bureau for its Seventh Assessment Cycle (2023–2029).
Consolidator: Aran García-Lekue (1975)
She holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering (European Doctorate, 2003) from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Liverpool (UK) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley (USA). In 2007, she joined the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) as a Gipuzkoa Fellow and became an Ikerbasque researcher in 2012. She has been a member of Jakiunde since 2019. She maintains numerous international collaborations and has served as a Mercator Fellow at the University of Kiel (Germany) and as a visiting researcher at LBNL (Berkeley) and DTU (Copenhagen). She has carried out significant science outreach work. She currently serves as Director of Strategic Projects at DIPC.
Starting: Amaia Arruabarrena
She earned her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine from UPV/EHU in 2016. After completing her doctorate, she moved to New York to work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), a leading institution in cancer research. In 2020, she returned to the Basque Country to join the Cancer Cell Signaling and Metabolism Lab at CIC bioGUNE, supported by a Juan de la Cierva Incorporation Fellowship. In 2021, she was recognized as an Ikerbasque Research Fellow, received the Junior Leader "La Caixa" Retaining 2022 award, and the Ramón y Cajal 2021 fellowship. In 2023, she received the L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize and established herself as a principal investigator at UPV/EHU, where she studies the connection between metabolism and epigenetic regulation in breast cancer.
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