José Miguel López-Higuera, (1954), Fellow SPIE 2012; Fellow OSA 2014; Senior IEEE 1998. Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Cantabria, 2015. Member of CIBER-BBN of Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 2016 and also member of instituto de Investigación Valdecilla, IDIVAL, 2017.

Founder and Head of the Photonics Engineering Group, at the University of Cantabria. Founder and Director of the International School of Light Sciences and Technologies, ISLIST at UIMP, 2016. Member of international Committees of Conferences of more than 32 (+32) R&D Institutions and Companies in the field of Photonics (mainly in sensing): International Steering’s (ISC), Technical Programs (TPC), Scientific SC). Director of 17 PhD theses (8 with extraordinary PhD award) framed inside the Photonics/Fiber Sensing field.

His R&D work focuses on Optical Fibre Sensor Systems and Instrumentations for Civil Engineering, Construction, Electrical Power Generation, Aero-space, Siderurgy, Automotive, Environmental, Medical and Biomedical, Smart Structure applications. 112 R&D&i projects (58 with public and competitive funding) acting on 93 of they as manager, coordinator or main researcher).

More than 740 research publications (including 71 invited talks) and 20 patents closely related to optical and fiber techniques for sensors and instrumentations

He has received numerous awards and recognitions being the most recent: admission to the Royal Academy of Medicine of Cantabria 2014; 2014 Awards for their R&D results by the Board of Trustees of the University of Cantabria Research Award; the Lifetime Achievements Award by the EWOFS, Limerick, Ireland, May 2016.