María José Gómara is a Tenured Scientist at CSIC and works at The Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC). She obtained her degree in Pharmacy at the University of Barcelona (UB) in 1992. She completed her PhD thesis in the peptide and protein synthesis group (IIQAB-CSIC) under the supervision of Dr Isabel Haro (1996–2000). Close collaborations were established with the Department of Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Pharmacy (UB) and with the Immunology Service (IDIBAPS) of Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. In addition, she carried out two research stays at the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and at the Institute of Medicine of the Austral University of Chile, in Valdivia.

She subsequently undertook a 4-year postdoctoral stay in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of the Basque Country. In 2005 she joined the Peptide Synthesis and Biomedical Applications Unit (IQAC-CSIC), where she currently conducts research based on the use of synthetic peptides in the field of biomedicine. As a result of her scientific career, she has published 95 articles in international scientific journals, 7 book chapters, and has supervised 3 doctoral theses.