Mauricio F. Erben (PhD in chemistry, 2005) has been regular Adjunct Professor for Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of La Plata (UNPL) in Argentina since 2009. His area of study involves the preparation of novel small species, mainly organosulfur compounds. Fundamental properties as well as potential applications are investigated. He has made important contributions to the understanding of the relationship between the gas phase molecular and electronic structure of molecular systems. His work is characterized by the use of a battery of spectroscopic techniques, including synchrotron-based photoionization experiments for determining valence- and core-electron distribution for selected molecules. He has been honored with the Award for scientific, technical and artistic labor at the University of La Plata (1st edition, 2010) and the National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Argentina, "José Galvele" prize (2012), in the category young researcher for his outstanding scientific achievements. His applied work recieved the "Innovar" 2017 award in Applied Reseach by Ministery of Science, Technology and Innovation (MinCyT), Argentina.

I received my Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the P. Universidad Católica de Chile, studying the enzymology and genomics of lignin degradation by white rot fungi with Dr. Rafael Vicuña. Then, as a PEW Latin American Fellow, I went to the lab of Jay C. Dunlap (Dartmouth Medical School), where as a postdoc I became interested in fungal functional genomics, photobiology, and circadian regulation, developing different tools such as a high-throughput platform for in vivo circadian studies in Neurospora crassa. In 2009, I joined the P. Universidad Católica de Chile, where currently I am Full Professor and since 2018 the director of the Millennium Institute for Integrative Biology (iBio) (previously Millennium Nucleus for Fungal Integrative and Synthetic Biology, 2014-2017) and a HHMI International Research Scholar. Work conducted in my lab, has contributed to advance the understanding of circadian timing, the role of clock-regulation on plant-pathogen interactions, general transcriptional mechanisms, and the effect of light on fungal transcriptional programs, and synthetic transcriptional circuits as well.