Barbara Villa Marcos was born in Asturias (Spain) in 1984. She received her M.Sc in Organic Chemistry in 2007 from University of Oviedo (Spain). During her M.Sc, she got an Erasmus scholarship in University of Liverpool, where she did her dissertation supervised by Prof. Xiao about the synthesis of new chiral ligands. She started her PhD in this group in October 2007, in the field of imine hydrogenation. Her research interests are organic synthesis and organometallic catalysis. She likes studying foreign languages, snorkelling and playing poker in her spare time. In 2012 she started a postdoctoral position with Dr. David Davies at Leicester.