Alberto Garcia is a computational scientist at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC). He holds a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley and has done research at Xerox PARC , Rutgers University, and the Universidad del Paris Vasco in Bilbao. He has a wide experience in the development of ab-initio simulation methods and their applications in physics, materials science, and geophysics. He is one of the most active contributors to the development of the SIESTA code, has participated in international initiatives in scientific software, and has published around 80 scientific articles.