Dr. José Antonio De Diego Onsurbe was born in Girona in 1960 and is of Spanish and Mexican nationality. He obtained his PhD from the University of La Laguna in 1994, with the qualification of Cum Laude. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in various positions: scientific collaborator, resident astrophysicist and support astronomer.
Since 1995 he has been working at the Instituto de Astronomía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where he is currently a Senior Researcher. In this centre, he has held different academic-administrative positions, including Head of the Department of Extragalactic Astrophysics and Cosmology (2003-2004); Member of the Senate for the Reform of the Academic Staff Statute (2004-2010) and Head of Academic Section: Coordinator of the Department of Science Communication (2016-2017). In addition, he has been coordinator in. Mexico of Spanish-Mexican collaborative projects: CONSOLIDER-GTC (2008-2012), and OTELO and Lockman-SpReSO (2017-2019).He has experience in research management at national level, having been part of several panels of ANECA, AEI, CNEAI and DEVA.
His academic work includes directing five research projects and two technological development projects in Mexico, as well as participating in four international projects. He has a total of 392 publications, 87 of which are refereed articles. His work includes variability and statistical methods for detecting variability in active galaxy nuclei, gravitational lenses and the solar system. He is currently working on neural network applications for morphological classification and redshift estimation of galaxies. In addition, he leads a group of technicians for the development of a methodology for replicating optical surfaces that is in the process of obtaining a patent filed with the Mexican Institute of Intellectual Property.
In the area of human resources, Dr. de Diego has supervised three doctoral theses, two master's theses and five bachelor's theses. He has also taught 41 postgraduate and 9 undergraduate courses on extragalactic astrophysics, statistical methods applied to astronomy, and neural networks. In addition, he has led the organisation of four workshops on databases and programming for astronomers. In 2016, he also led the organisation of the public event La noche de las estrellas at UNAM, which was attended by 80,000 people.
