
Dr. Martinez-Lombilla completed a 4-year undergraduate in Physics and a Master's degree in Astrophysics at Universidad de La Laguna (Spain). She worked as Telescope Operating Technician at the Teide Observatory for a year. Then, she started a Ph.D. program at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC, Spain) and a thesis entitled 'Thick discs and truncations in spiral galaxies' under the supervision of Prof. Johan Knapen and Dr. Ignacio Trujillo. During that period, she had stays abroad at the Liverpool John Moores University (UK), the University of Oulu (Finland), and the University of Central Lancashire (UK). She completed her Ph.D. in 2018 and continued 1 year more in the same institution in a postdoctoral position. Since February 2020, she is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Prof. Sarah Brough’s team.
The main research interest of Dr. Martinez-Lombilla is to understanding how galaxies were formed and how they evolve through the study of their low surface brightness regions. She develops new techniques to detect the dimmest structures in galaxies —like halos, tidal streams, thick discs, breaks, and truncations—, or around them within clusters and groups of galaxies —as the intracluster and intragroup light (ICL). She is an expert in the characterization of scattered light and the analysis of its effect in both point-like sources and extended objects within ultra-deep imaging. She also has wide experience modeling galaxy light profiles and their structural components.
Dr. Martinez-Lombilla is part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Galaxies Science Collaboration, actively contributing to the Low Surface Brightness Working Group. She is co-chair of Astronomy & Programming workshops in developing countries, and very active in women in STEM outreach activities. She is currently ECR cohort of the UNSW Women in Maths and Science Champions Program.
As a first author:
Full Dr. Martinez-Lombilla publication track record can be found in this SAO/NASA-ADS link.