Del Río, José Carlos
José Carlos del Río Andrade
José C. del Río is a Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) at the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville (IRNAS-CSIC), where he leads the research group "Plant Biomass – Valorization and Utilization" within the Department of Plant Biotechnology. He has held various management positions, including Head of Department (2010–2014) and Deputy Director of IRNAS-CSIC (1998–2002). He earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Seville in 1989. He subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the Universities of Oklahoma (USA) and the University of Bristol (UK), before joining CSIC as a Research Scientist in 1993. In 1996, he completed a one-year research stay as a visiting scientist at the Pennsylvania State University (USA).
His research focuses on the study of lignocellulosic biomass from agroforestry crops, with the aim of promoting its sustainable valorization and utilization. He is particularly interested in the mechanisms underlying the transformation of recalcitrant components such as lignin and lipophilic extractives, whose removal is essential for industrial applications. Throughout his career, he has maintained strong collaborations with national and international research groups, as well as with R&D centers of leading companies in the agricultural, forestry, pulp and paper, and biotechnology sectors, through national and European projects and research contracts. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the understanding of lignin structure in plants, especially for the discovery of polyphenols from alternative biosynthetic pathways—such as flavonoids and stilbenes—that act as genuine monomers incorporated into the lignin polymer during the lignification process.
His scientific career includes over 250 publications in SCI-indexed journals, with around 15,000 citations, an h-index of 68 in Scopus (h=80 in Google Scholar), more than 300 conference presentations, and 8 patents of invention, some of which have been licensed. He has supervised 14 PhD theses and 14 Master’s theses and has served as a national representative and Management Committee member in several COST Actions. He is also a member of the editorial board of various international scientific journals. He has been awarded the prestigious University of Seville–Bruker Prize for the research work with the greatest technological impact in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in the 2013, 2015, and 2019 editions. Since 2017, he has been continuously listed in the prestigious “World's Top 2% Scientists” ranking compiled by Stanford University.
