Francisco Peñas Silva

Researcher

franciscojesus.penas@unican.es

+34 942 20 16 16 Ext. 56127

Biography

Postdoc researcher of the Continental Ecosystem group. BSc in Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid, PhD in Integrated Management of Aquatic Systems from the Universidad de Cantabria and Member of IHCantabria since 2008. His research focuses on the fields of ecohydrology, impacts of flow alteration and integrated catchment management.

Hence, in his current research, Francisco focuses the understanding how flow regime interacts and controls freshwater ecosystem function and how the hydrological alteration modifies it and produces loss of ecosystems services. He has also participated in projects covering topics related with the conservation and management of aquatic systems, including the application of the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive, and the definition of environmental flows, and thus, he has a lot of experience on monitoring human impacts on river ecosystems.

In addition, during his pre and postdoc activity at IHCantabria, he has took part on several research projects (11) and consultant contracts (14) with different public and private funding bodies. In 2017, he was granted with a two-year postdoctoral fellowship by the national fund for the scientific and technological development of the Chilean Government (FONDECYT), so from 2017 to 2019 he developed his research activity in the UCSC (Chile)
The result of this scientific activity can be summarized in the publication of 19 WoS papers (10 Q1, 8 as first author; H-Index = 8), 2 book chapters and over 30 presentations in national and international congress.

Regarding his teaching experience, he has been the responsible professor for the course “Introduction to the integrated water resource management” of the pre- and post-graduate programs at the Faculty of Engineering of the UCSC (Chile). He has also collaborated in several courses within the postgraduate program of IHCantabria at the Universidad de Cantabria. In addition, he has supervised 2 final year projects and 3 master thesis. He is currently supervising 2 PhD theses framed within the EuroFlow project, an Innovative Training Network (ITN) financed by the UE and led by the Leeds and the University of Cantabria.

PUBLICATIONS