Dr. Julio Polaina holds a MS from University of Seville, Spain (1976) and a PhD from the same University (1980).
He carried out postdoctoral research at the Solar Energy Research Institute (currently National Renewable Energy Laboratory) in Golden, Colorado, USA (1980-1982), Calrsberg Laboratory, Copenhagen, Denmark (1982-1985) and the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry and Food Technology (IATA), Valencia, Spain (1986-1988).
He held postdoctoral fellowships from the European Molecular Biology Organization, The Carlsberg Foundation and the Juan March Foundation. Since 1998 he is a Research Scientist of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), working at the IATA of Valencia where he is since 1995 Head of the Laboratory of Enzyme Structure and Function.
Dr. Polaina has coauthored about 80 scientific papers. He has edited the book 'Industrial Enzymes: Structure, Function and Applications', together with A. P. MacCabe (Springer, 2007), available in Chinese edition (Science Press, 2010). Since 2009 he is Editor-in-Chief of World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology (Springer).