Rubén Darío Costa Riquelme obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Valencia, and later conducted a research stay at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) in Germany. Since 2017, he has been a research professor at the IMDEA Materials institute in Madrid where he heads the Hybrid Optoelectronic Materials and Devices laboratory. His research has focused on the new generation of BioLEDs, a project that seeks to eliminate the need to use rare-earth metals, very scarce chemical elements found in the Earth’s crust which are toxic, non-renewable pollutants. Among other recognitions and awards, he has received MIT Technology Review’s 2017 European Innovator under 35 award, the 2016 Young Researcher award from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry and the European Young Chemist Award’s Silver Medal, also in 2016.