Dr. Fernandez had a Bachelor degree in Marine Sciences (Marine Pollution and Environment) since 2004 (1996-2004) by the University of Vigo (UVIGO), Spain; a Graduate degree in Aquaculture Production since 2004 (2002-2004) by Instituto Gallego de Formación en Acuicultura (I.Ga.F.A.), Isla de Arousa, Spain; a Postgraduate Certificate in Education by the University of Vigo (2005); and a Master in Aquaculture (2006-2008) by the University of Barcelona (UB), Spain. In 2011 he got his PhD in Biology by the University of Barcelona (UB, Spain) on the area of nutrition and early development under the supervision of Dr E. Gisbert (IRTA-UB) and Dr. JL. Zambonino (NUAGE IFREMER-Brest; France) with the thesis title: Hypervitaminosis A effects on Sparus aurata and Solea senegalensis: characterization of larval performance and the underlying gene expression of abnormal skeletogenesis); where the effect of vitamin A on marine fish early development has been studied applying multidisciplinary approaches (in vivo and in vitro approaches, histology and immunohistochemistry procedures and transcriptomic analysis by qPCR and microarrays). For such degree, he was granted by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) of the Spanish Government with a FPI fellowship. During his PhD he got also the Certificate in Laboratory Animal Science by the University of Barcelona (Spain). Afterwards, he was granted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) with one postdoc fellow at the Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR, Portugal) with Professor Dr. Cancela, Dr. Laize, and Dr. Gavaia (2012-present; http://bioskel.ccmar.ualg.pt/). There, his research was focus on vitamin K effects on fish larvae development and started a new research line on how pollutants and human drugs might affect bone development through the pregnane X receptor; and increasing his experience in molecular biology techniques (cloning, knocking down gene function by microinjection of morpholinos, in vivo live imaging procedures and transcriptomic analysis by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies among others).

Along his research career he performed several mobility actions and attended to specific workshops. In this sense, he had training at: University of Nordland with Dr. J. Fernandes (Next-Generation Sequencing in microRNAs, Hands on Illumina MiSeq and CLC genomic workbench (QIAGEN) platforms; Bodo, Norway, 2015); The Marine Science Station of Toralla with Dr. A. Caballero (Marine Evolutionary Genomics and Proteomics; Toralla, Spain, 2014); The Research and Training Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries with Dr. M. Manchado (Cooperation and biotechnology for a sustainable aquaculture; El Toruño, Spain, 2013); The Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência with Dr. P. Fernandes (Training Programme in Bioinformatics, Lisbon, 2012); The University of Algarve (LARVITA Fish Larvae Training School; Faro, Portugal, 2010); The Instituto de Ciencias Marinas de Andalucia (ICMAN-CSIC) with Dr. Carmen Sarasquete (Histology and immunohistochemistry procedures); The University of Bergen (Training course on prevention of malformations in Atlantic salmon; Bergen, Norway, 2009); The IFREMER-Brest Center with Dr. D. Mazurais (Gene expression analysis by microarrays; France 2009); The University of Algarve with Dr. ML. Cancela (hands on in vitro cell culture); and the IFREMER-Brest with Dr. Ch. Cahu (Feed formulation; 2007). The different research skills gained all over the years gave him the possibility to improve his research knowledge, skills and capacities as well as having an interesting international networking to pursue his main research objectives. Nowadays, his is interested in studying how pollutants, and particularly commonly used human drugs, might affect the physiology of aquatic organisms through PXR: a xenobiotic sensor; and the discovery of new markers of pollutant exposure applying NGS technologies.

He had a total of 34 publications: 25 research articles (14 as first author/corresponding author) in peer-reviewed journals and 9 book chapters. He presented his work in 49 scientific meeting communications, 28 as posters and 21 as oral presentations (5 as invited speaker).