Full Professor of Crop Protection within the School of Agricultural Engineering (ETSIA). Graduated in Biology in the Universidad de Sevilla (1985), obtained his PhD in the Department of Biotechnology of the ETSIA Madrid (1990). Spent 33 months in a postdoctoral stay in the Department of Plant Pathology, University of California at Riverside, USA, and in early 1993 was appointed Professor in the ETSIA of the Universidad Pública de Navarra to become Full Professor at the beginning of 2002. Has. He has made further specialization stays at the University of the West of England (Bristol, UK), Texas A&M University, the University of Oklahoma (USA) and the University of Málaga, among others, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Akureyri (Iceland). In year 2000 he received the BBVA-University Award for young researchers. Is referee ad hoc for different national and international agencies (ANEP, Agencia estatal de Investigación, ACSUG, CINECA-MIUR, ANVUR, etc.), scientific journals, and Editor of the JCR journals Phytopathologia Mediterranea (since 1999), PLoS ONE (2012-14), Frontiers in Plant Science (since 2022) and Toxins (since 2023). He participated in national panels for the accreditation of university professors (ANECA, 2015-2018) and the evaluation of research activity (CNEAI, 2014 and 2015). Has been Head of the Departamento de Producción Agraria from 2010 to 2016. He was elected for different positions in the Boards of the Spanish Society for Microbiology and the Spanish Phytopathological Society, of which he has been President elect (2013-16). In 2018, he was awarded the "Fellow" distinction (Socio de Honor) by the Spanish Phytopathological Society.

He has been teaching different subjects on crop protection, molecular plant-microbe interactions and bioinformatics, in different subjects in  the degrees "Biotecnología" (subjects Molecular biology and Bioinformatics) and "Ingeniería Agroalimentaria y del Medio Rural" (subjects Crop Protection, Diseases of herbaceous and fruit crops, among others, including the double degree and the international program), of the School of Agricultural Engineering (ETSIA). He supervised eight PhD Thesis as well as ten MPhil Thesis. He obtained the recognition of six teaching (one every 5-years teaching; quinquenios) plus six research (one every 6-years research; sexenios) periods.

He is the PI of the “Phytobacteriology” research line, within the UPNA research group “Crop Protection” (Protección de cultivos), working on the biology, genomics and evolution of Pseudomonas syringae, with emphasis on virulence genes and  mobile genetic elements, including native plasmids. He has been the PI of fourteen competitive national grants, four regional grants and four international bilateral projects, as well as of diverse research contracts with agronomy companies. He is author of one book and editor of four books (Caister Academic, Springer, Kluwer and SEF-Bubok), as well as of diverse research articles (profiles in ResearcherID and Google Scholar).