
Oscar Vicente, Prof. PhD
Dr Oscar Vicente is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Department of Biotechnology and a research group leader at the Institute for the Conservation and Improvement of Valencian Agrodiversity (COMAV), Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain.
Dr Vicente obtained his PhD in Sciences in 1983 from the Autonomous University of Madrid. After a three-year postdoctoral period at the Friedrich-Miescher Institut in Basel (Switzerland), Oscar Vicente moved in 1988 to the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, University of Vienna (Austria), where he established and led a research group working on different aspects of plant reproductive biology and its biotechnological applications, and on the molecular characterisation of pollen allergens and plant MAP kinases. Oscar Vicente returned to Spain in 1996 to join the UPV faculty, where he teaches different subjects in the molecular biology and biotechnology areas to Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering students. In Vienna and Valencia, he has supervised 12 PhD Theses (three more are currently in progress), over 30 Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree Theses, and the work of many exchange students and visiting scientists. Oscar Vicente has participated in 45 research projects and seven research contracts with private companies or public institutions. His research interest focuses on studying plant responses to abiotic stress and stress tolerance mechanisms in the context of climate change and, more recently, the effect of plant biostimulants on those mechanisms. In these studies, Dr Vicente’s group is using different crops, crop relatives and wild species naturally tolerant to stress (e.g., halophytes) as experimental material, and combining field and laboratory/greenhouse work and physiological, biochemical and molecular approaches. Oscar Vicente has published ca. 190 indexed scientific papers, most in the Plant Sciences category (Web of Science core collection; h-index: 39). He is vice president and coordinator for Spain of the European Biotechnology Thematic Network Association (EBTNA) and is included in the ‘Top-100’ Spanish scientists in Plant Science and Agronomy (Research.com). In 2017, the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), awarded Dr Vicente the Doctor Honoris Causa degree.