Prof. Asunción Fernández graduated in Chemistry at the University of Cádiz (Spain) (1980) and in Physics at UNED (Spanish Open University) (1984). She carried out her PhD work at “Max-Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie” obtaining her Dr. degree at the Univ. Dortmund (Germany) in June 1983. In 1983 she started a postdoc stay at the Univ. of Seville and in 1987 she joined as tenured scientist the Materials Science Institute of Seville (ICMS, Spain). She became full Professor of CSIC in 2002. She leads the research group "Nanostructured Materials and Microstructure - NanoMatMicro" since 1991 and is the head scientist of the Electron microscopy laboratories of the ICMS since 1996. From July 2001 to November 2009, she has been the director of the ICMS. Her research activities have been mainly focused on the physical-chemical study of nanomaterials, aiming to control the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanostructured thin films; as well as, to apply microstructural characterization techniques for the study of materials in the nano-scale. At present she is investigating the bottom-up fabrication of nanostructured thin films by sputtering deposition assisted by plasmas of Helium and other light gases.