Born on December 2^nd (1965) in Madrid (Spain), Francisco J. García Vidal graduated in Physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) in 1988. He obtained a PhD in Physics from the UAM in 1992 under the supervision of Profs. Fernando Flores and Alvaro Martín Rodero.

Francisco J. García Vidal was a Marie-Curie Fellow at Imperial College (1994-1996), working in the theoretical group of Prof. Sir John Pendry. After this postdoctoral stay, he has been associated with the UAM, first as an associate professor and from December 2007 as a full professor. He is the founding director (2012-2021) of the Condensed Matter Physics Center - IFIMAC at UAM, which in 2015 was recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) as an Excellent Research Center within the María de Maeztu program. This distinction was renewed twice, in years 2019 and 2023.

During the last twenty-five years and thanks to the financial support from the European Union and the Spanish government, Prof. Garcia Vidal has established a world-leading theoretical group at UAM fully dedicated to investigating the exciting possibilities of Plasmonics, Metamaterials and Nanophotonics. During this period of time, his theoretical group has collaborated with the most relevant experimental groups working in those fields. Prof. Garcia Vidal has directed more than fifteen grants (at both National and European levels) as Principal Investigator and was awarded with a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2012.

His theoretical group has made seminal contributions to the fields of Plasmonics, Metamaterials and Nanophotonics such as:

• A. Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering and highly absorptive metamaterials.
• B. Extraordinary optical transmission through subwavelength apertures.
• C. The concept of spoof surface plasmons.
• D. Light waveguiding using surface plasmons.
• E. Quantum Plasmonics.
• F. Near-field Radiative Heat Transfer.
• G. Polaritonic Chemistry and Materials Science.

Prof. Garcia Vidal has supervised 14 PhD theses during his scientific career: 1) Pilar Fernández de Pablos (2004). 2) Jorge Bravo Abad (2006). 3) Blanca Biel Ruiz (2006). 4) Antonio I. Fernández Domínguez (2009). 5) Johan Christensen (2010). 6) Sergio Gutiérrez Rodrigo (2009, University of Zaragoza). 7) Diego Martín Cano (2013). 8) Paloma Arroyo Huidobro (2013). 9) Carlos González Ballestero (2017). 10) Javier Cuerda Rodríguez (2017). 11) Victor Fernández-Hurtado (2018). 12) Javier del Pino Gutiérrez (2018). 13) Javier Galego (2019). 14) Rocío Sáez-Blázquez (2020). Prof. Garcia Vidal has also supervised the postdoc work of more than 15 researchers.

Prof. Garcia Vidal has given more than 100 talks (invited, keynote and plenary) at international conferences. He has also co-organized 12 international conferences or workshops. He serves as reviewer of the most important journals and he was a member of the Editorial Board of New Journal of Physics from January 2009 to December 2013. From March 2017 to December 2021, Prof. Garcia Vidal served as Divisional Associate Editor in the journal Physical Review Letters of the American Physical Society (APS) and has been recognized as an outstanding referee of the APS journals in year 2021. He was selected as fellow of the Optical Society of America in year 2020, was awarded by the Jaume I Prize in the category of Basic Research in the same year and has been also awarded with Blas Cabrera National prize in Physics in year 2021. He has also been selected seven times among the most influential physicists of the decade (2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022) by Thomson Reuters.

---