Inés Corral Pérez

Inés Corral Pérez is a full professor and leader of the Excited State Reactivity research group at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Her work focuses on prebiotic chemical evolution and the photophysical mechanisms underlying nucleic acid composition. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from UAM (2005) and completed postdoctoral research at the Free University of Berlin and Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. She has been a Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow.

• Education: PhD in Chemistry (UAM, 2005)

Her research investigates why DNA/RNA bases persist under UV radiation, studying ancestral molecular precursors through photophysical analysis. Current projects explore chemical evolution pathways in early Earth conditions.

Awards include the Madrid Community's top doctoral thesis prize. She leads 3 national and 4 international research projects, supervising 9 doctoral theses. Her group examines light-driven reactions in prebiotic molecules to uncover evolutionary selection mechanisms.

Active in interdisciplinary science, her work bridges chemistry and astrobiology, contributing to understanding life's molecular origins.