Jose L. is currently Ikerbasque Professor and Head of Functional Surfaces and Coatings. He carried out his doctoral studies in Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Hampshire (USA) on the impact of coating architecture on the hardness, friction and wear of nanocomposite tribological coatings. From 2014 to 2019, he has been the director of the Surface Engineering and Precision Institute (SEPI) at the University of Cranfield (United Kingdom) and co-Director of the Centre of Doctoral Training in Ultra-precision Engineering along with Cambridge University. Previously he worked in the academic sector (at the Institute of Materials Science of Madrid and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), in the industrial sector of renewable energies at Abengoa Research and in the field of tool materials and coatings at the company Oerlikon Balzers in Liechtenstein. He has published more than 110 scientific articles and has been inventor of more than 24 national and international patent applications in new materials and coatings for solar energy, catalysis and tools. He has been the main organizer of several international conferences and symposiums in the field of surface engineering and has acted as associate editor of several international scientific journals.