Mario Merino received his phd in aerospace engineering in 2013 (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid). Currently he is an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). He has received the Prof. Kuriki award for electric propulsion, the UC3M Excellence Award 2021, and the SENER Foundation award for the best doctoral thesis in engineering. His passion is plasma space propulsion and his research focuses on the development of new technologies, such as magnetic nozzles, to facilitate contactless plasma acceleration to high speeds, the design of new types of space thrusters, such as the helicon plasma thruster, and in improving the efficiency of existing ones. He has carried out research stays at MIT, UCLA and the University of Stuttgart. Mario is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant ZARATHUSTRA. In his free time, he loves to walk in the mountains and nature, travel and enjoy reading and playing the piano.