The pharmacist María de Los Llanos Palop enters the Royal Academy of Medicine of Castilla-La Mancha
Professor María de los Llanos Palop Herreros will give the entrance speech to the Royal Academy of Medicine of Castilla-La Mancha on February 2, an institution that she trusts to open its doors to the entire population, to disseminate and transfer to the public opinion what happens in laboratories. And it is that she is clear that “scientists are moved by illusion”, the one that she has not lost at 62 years of age and that she intends to spread.
Palop Herreros will enter the Royal Academy of Medicine with a conference on microorganisms, “our little allies”
Convinced that science has to be understood so that the population values it and bets on it, this Albacete native, as her name betrays, and Toledo by adoption, will defend the importance of microorganisms in her conference, which hesitate to define as “our little allies”. For a reason, María de Los Llanos Palop is a professor of Microbiology, a science that has shown the world its importance in this pandemic.
But he will not refer to the dangers, he will delve into the float that ‘his allies’ suppose in the shipwreck of an infection. Palop will explain to the academics that within microorganisms there are not only pathogens, there are also small allies that are essential for health, such as the famous probiotics, capable of defending the intestinal mucosa from the attack of pathogens, to which she is dedicated now in one of his projects.
A woman of science and mother of mathematicians, she considers that, in her case, she has not encountered obstacles due to gender, despite having started on a stage surrounded by men. In fact, now he has a team in which there are only women, but not because of positive discrimination, simply because they were the best.
A long-distance race driven by “the desire to know”
What he has seen throughout his career, which began more than three decades ago, is that science is a long-distance race in which “we are not for money but for the desire to know”. There are no schedules or financial reward for success, but because scientists “are moved by illusion.”
Of course, this professor would like the population to value the work of her colleagues beyond the pandemic. And it is that the day to day is made of small steps that, no matter how ordinary they may seem, one day science took. His little world, that of microorganisms, is responsible for dairy products, beer, bread or wine, invisible allies capable of forming an army that protects the intestine from infections.
Graduated in Pharmacy and Professor of Food Technology
María de los Llanos Palop graduated in Pharmacy from the University of Valencia, where she completed her thesis in the Department of Parasitology. His path was, from the beginning, that of investigation. In fact, he did his doctoral thesis at the CSIC, where he isolated a new species of bacteria, of the genus Clostridium, which is deposited in the Spanish Collection of Type Cultures (CECT).
After finishing her thesis and following a postdoctoral year in the Netherlands, she joined the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Chemistry in Ciudad Real. In 1991 he obtained by public examination a position as Professor at the University in the area of Food Technology. In May 2011 she reached, also by opposition, the position of University Professor.
Palop teaches Microbiology at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Biochemistry of Toledo.
