Catalina Picornell Alou graduated in Physics from the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona in 1981, she got a Ph.D in Physics from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) in 1987. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Physics of the UIB, in the area of Applied Physics. She has an extensive teaching experience. Her research activity, framed in the field of Materials Physics, is based on the study and characterization of shape memory alloys.