Ana María Rivas Velasco holds a Doctoral Degree in Pharmacy and a Bachelor's Degree in Food Science and Technology from the University of Granada. She obtained accreditation to become a Professor (Catedrática) in 2015 and was awarded the professorship in 2018. Prior to obtaining her Doctoral Degree she obtained a Predoctoral Grant for the Training of University Lecturers (FPU) and carried out research stays in international laboratories at Tufts University (Boston), the Institut Jules Bordet of the Free University of Brussels (Belgium), and the National University of Río Cuarto (Argentina). She later carried out a 3-year postdoctoral research stay at the University of Edinburgh's Medical Research Council (United Kingdom), funded by various grants including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Union. In 2004, she obtained a "Ramón y Cajal" (RYC) Contract at the University of Granada in the area of food technology. In 2007, she participated in the competitions to access Senior Lecturer positions (Profesores Titulares de Universidad) in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, obtaining national accreditation.
Prof Rivas Velasco has obtained recognition for 4 sexenios (six-year research periods), accredited by the National Commission for the Evaluation of Research Activity (CNEAI), and is currently the Principal Investigator of the research groups AGR-255 Nutrition, Diet and Risk Assessment and E15-EXPODIET: Exposure of Food to Environmental Contaminants at the Biohealth Research Institute in Granada (ibs.GRANADA). Her main line of research focuses on the effects of exposure to endocrine disruptors on human health. She has participated in 35 national and international research projects funded by bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), 8 of which were obtained in the last 5 years, and served as Principal Investigator on 10 of them. She is the author of several scientific publications in the field of endocrine disruption in indexed journals on the Web of Science (JCR), most of them in the first quartile. She has also obtained numerous research contracts with companies. She has been an evaluator of research projects in public calls for applications in the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, Greece and Georgia, as well as a regular reviewer for indexed journals.
In terms of her teaching work, she has lectured on various undergraduate and master's degrees including the Bachelor's Degrees in Pharmacy; Human Nutrition and Dietetics; and Physiotherapy; as well as on the Master's Degrees in Human Nutrition; and Advances in Food Quality and Technology. Thanks to the Erasmus programme, she has been a guest lecturer at Uppsala University (Sweden, 2018), the University of Parma (Italy, 2014) and the University of Florence (Italy, 2013). Moreover, she is the supervisor of the EFSA's European Food Risk Assessment (EU-FORA) Fellowship Programme. She has coordinated and collaborated on various teaching innovation projects and tutorial action plans. In addition to publishing several book chapters and articles, she has given presentations at national and international conferences on quality and innovation in university teaching.
Since 2021 she has carried out several management activities as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN). Moreover, she has been the Coordinator of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Biohealth Research Institute in Granada and a member of its Scientific Council. She is the Scientific Secretary of the UGR's "José Mataix Verdú" Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INYTA) and was previously Coordinator and member of the Academic Committee of the Master's Degree in Advances in Food Quality and Technology.
