VANESA
ORTEGA LOPEZ

She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering that obtained the Extraordinary Doctorate Award from the University of Burgos (UBU), in 2011, within the doctoral program of Civil and Industrial Engineering. Previously, she had also obtained other awards such as the 2nd National Degree Award (2002). She has received various scholarships, including a postgraduate scholarship from the Regional Government (2004-2005). Her professional experience is linked to that Council and to the company Tragsa S.A. over the years 2005-2008. Simultaneously, in 2004, she began to work at the UBU as an Adjunct Professor, changing to a full-time position in 2008. Currently, she holds the position of Full Professor in the Area of Mechanics of Continuous Media and Theory of Structures of the Civil Engineering Department. During her 20 years as a university professor, she has conducted over 3,500 hours of teaching across various courses. She has supervised a large number of Degree and Master Theses and, since 2013, she has been Head of the Teaching Innovation Group "Transition from High School to University". Between 2012 and 2019, she held the academic position of Secretary of the Civil Engineering Department. She is the Coordinator of the Erasmus Agreement with the University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro (Portugal, since 2005) and the Erasmus Agreement with the University of Padua (Italy, since 2017). She conducted a postdoctoral research stay in 2021 at the University of Padua and has been teaching in the Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering, as visiting professor. She is also a member of the PhD School of this University since 2018 and maintains close collaboration with professors from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, with whom she has co-authored several research articles and conference communications. She is the Head of the Sustainable Construction Research Group SUCONS and a member of the Consolidated Research Unit UIC-231 of the Junta de Castilla y León. The main research topic of SUCONS is the re-use of by-products in building and civil engineering applications. The SUCONS group is a member of Eco-H (sustainable concretes) association and a corporate member of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM). She has co-authored an important number of articles indexed in JCR (WoS) since 2011 and she is also a co-author of several book chapters, various teaching innovation articles, and patents granted in the field. She has likewise presented oral communications at many international conferences. Her works have been profusely cited with almost 3,000 citations (according to Scopus), an h-index of 32, excluding self-citations. She has supervised four Doctoral Thesis: Dr. Marta Skaf (2016), related to the use of steel slag in bituminous mixtures; Dr. Aratz García-Llona (2020), with Industrial mention, related to the simulation of siderurgic fiber-reinforced concrete, in collaboration with TECNALIA Research&Innovation; Dr. Víctor Revilla-Cuesta (2021), about Self-Compacting Concrete with RCA, who held a Ministry scholarship FPU, and finally the Doctoral Thesis of Dr. Jorge J. Guevara about sustainable construction blocks in Ecuador (2022). Finally, her research has consistently received financial support over the years, with her active participation in 25 competitive projects and contracts with companies, mainly focusing on investigations in new materials, structures, and waste reuse in construction, where she has often served as the Lead Researcher.