Luz Roncal obtains the Prize for Young Female Scientific Talent in the category of mathematics

• This recognition is granted by the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences Foundation (FRACE) and Mastercard to young Spanish scientists who have stood out for their trajectory

Luz Roncal, Ikerbasque Research Fellow at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics - BCAM has been awarded by the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences Foundation (FRACE) and Mastercard with the Prize for Young Female Scientific Talent in the category of mathematics. This recognition is part of an initiative that aims to support female talent in Spain by awarding four Spanish scientists who have excelled for their careers in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, Biology and Geology or Applications of Science to Technology.

Roncal has been distinguished with the prize for her “relevant contributions to harmonic analysis and partial derivative equations, reflected in more than 30 articles, which have appeared in numerous scientific publications as reference articles". The jury has also positively valued her participation in various activities in the fields of management, education and scientific dissemination.

The researcher says she is "very proud" of winning the prize, and points out that she began her scientific career in a group that was "small, but faithful to the principles of constancy, seriousness and work" that later allowed her to meet mathematicians of international prestige. For this reason, she is especially grateful for the influence that her colleagues from the Department of Mathematics and Computing at the University of La Rioja and the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics - BCAM have had on her career. If she had to distinguish his contribution beyond the data of the curriculum, she assures that it would be "to endow scientific activity with a social and human dimension that serves to improve people's well-being, and that this is reverted back into quality results".

The awards ceremony, for which more than 500 candidates applied in the different categories, took place on October 30^th in Madrid and was attended by the Secretary of State for Universities, Research, Development and Innovation, Ángeles Heras Caballero, as well as several representatives of the RAC, Mastercard and the Spanish Association for Scientific Communication. Roncal could not attend the ceremony, as he was part of a thesis defense tribunal at the University of the Basque Country on the same date. Instead, her mother, María Dolores Gómez, was present. She collected the prize and thanked the organisers and the jury on behalf of her daughter.

In addition to the BCAM researcher, three other scientists have been awarded in this initiative: Dr. Nanda Rea in the Physics and Chemistry category, Dr. María Llorens-Martín in the Biology and Geology category, and Dr. Ana Freire Veiga in the Applications of Science to Technology category.  

About Dr. Roncal

Luz Roncal received her PhD in Mathematics from the University of La Rioja in 2009. Since 2016 she has been a researcher at BCAM - Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, where she is part of the Analysis of Partial Differential Equations group. Specifically, she works in the Harmonic Analysis research line. Since the beginning of 2019 she has been an Ikerbasque Research Fellow and has just been awarded a Ramón y Cajal contract. Before joining BCAM, she was an Interim University Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Computing at the University of La Rioja. In 2017 she was awarded one of the BBVA Foundation's Leonardo Scholarships to support researchers and cultural creators with a highly innovative scientific, technological or cultural production.