Marta is currently Head of Unit for the panel on Biological Hazards, EFSA. In January 2003 she joined the European Food Safety Authority first in Brussels (Belgium) and then in Parma (Italy) giving support to the Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards. The BIOHAZ panel deals with questions regarding risk assessment of biological hazards relating to food safety and food-borne disease, including food-borne zoonoses and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, microbiology, food hygiene and associated waste management.
She holds a BSc in Biological Sciences, an MSc in Genetics and Microbial Biotechnology and a PhD in Food Microbiology by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. From 1992 to 2004 she was an Associate professor at the University of Barcelona at the Interuniversity Master of Biotechnology. She's a Board elected member of the Food Microbiology Group of the Spanish Society for Microbiology, member of the editorial Board of Food Analytical Methods, and has served as member of the Advisory Board for several scientific projects funded by DG RTD (VETMETNET-, BASELINE).
Prior to joining EFSA, she worked for IRTA (Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology) in Catalonia (Spain) where she was Head of Unit on Food Microbiology and Biotechnology and led a research group on applied research on meat and food safety. IRTA's main activities are scientific research and technology transfer in the area of agriculture, aquaculture and the agrifood industry.
She has extensively published scientific papers, reviews, book chapters and divulgative papers on food safety, particularly the development of starter and bioprotective cultures for meat products, probiotics to improve the safety of poultry meat, new emerging preservation technologies as well the development of rapid diagnostic methods such as PCR for food pathogens and lately on EFSA's activities on Risk Assessment of Biological Hazards.