Dr. Cillero-Pastor studied molecular biology and biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. She obtained her PhD at the INIBIC Institute of La Coruña (cum laude) after having been awarded a fellowship from the Carlos III Health Institute (Spain) to study the effect of pro-inflammatory cytokines in diseased cartilage. After having obtained an Angeles Alvariño fellowship, she then moved to Amsterdam to work as postdoctoral researcher at AMOLF. In this period, she developed new mass spectrometry imaging approaches in the field of orthopaedics. In 2015 she joined Maastricht University as CORE lab leader at the division of Imaging Mass Spectrometry (M4i). Since then, she has established her own research line on the application of mass spectrometry imaging and proteomics for different biomedical applications with special focus on cardiovascular research and musculoskeletal diseases. She has received funding from NWO and Horizon 2020, including several ITN grants.

As principal investigator at MERLN, she will be developing and applying spatial omics approaches to understand cell-biomaterial interactions, local drug delivery, biofilm formation, and molecular mechanisms of cell differentiation.