Raquel Juan Ovejero holds a PhD in Methodology and Applications in Life Sciences from the University of Vigo, Spain (2020). She is an early-career researcher dedicated to exploring the interactions between biotic and abiotic factors and their impacts on key ecosystem functions. Raquel has published eleven papers, with ten as the first author, in top journals in soil science, environmental science, and forestry. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Forestry Engineering (University of Valladolid, Spain, 2012) and a Master's Degree in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Forest Systems (University of Valladolid, Spain, 2014). In 2016, she received a competitive PhD fellowship (FPI program) from the Spanish Government to complete her doctoral training at the University of Vigo (Spain). After completing her PhD, she worked as a research associate at the University of Granada (Spain) for 1.5 years, focusing on topics related to Mediterranean forest restoration. In September 2022, she began a two-year international research stay at the Centre for Functional Ecology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), funded by a competitive three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Regional Government of Galicia (Spain). During this time, she started studying how the expansion of novel forest ecosystems affects soil-based ecosystem functions. Currently in the final year of this fellowship, she is based at the University of Vigo while maintaining an official role as a research collaborator at the University of Coimbra. Apart from her research experience, she has practical experience in forest management, having worked as a forestry engineer in three forest fire-fighting campaigns in the Spanish island of Mallorca (years 2014 and 2015) and in Madrid (year 2020). Raquel has presented her work at several international conferences in China, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and France. She has also completed two three-month research stays at leading environmental science institutions in northern Europe: one at the former Finnish Forest Research Institute in Oulu, Finland (2013) during her Master's studies, and another at the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences at the University of Tartu, Estonia (2018) during her PhD. Throughout her doctoral and postdoctoral career, she has been committed to teaching, lecturing over 240 practical hours in different subjects of the Biology Degree at the University of Vigo, and supervising two Bachelor students in their internships at the University of Coimbra during 2024. She is actively involved in the peer-review process, having reviewed 21 manuscripts for leading journals. In January 2024, she joined the Review College of the British Ecological Society, contributing to their annual grant reviews. Moreover, she has begun engaging in outreach activities, including her participation in the 2023 European Researchers' Night in Coimbra, where she led an interactive activity for children on soil biodiversity. Additionally, she contributed to a feature of the Galician Research Network (InvestiGal) entitled “What is being investigated (outside of) Galicia?” to make science more accessible. Her solid background in forestry has profoundly influenced her research focus on ecosystem functions and interactions. With the rapid pace of global change, understanding ecological processes has become an increasingly urgent task, requiring scientists to navigate considerable uncertainties. Raquel is trying to identify key gaps in knowledge regarding the relative contributions of below- and aboveground interactions to ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity under global change. To address these challenges, her research focuses on how landscape transformations and climatic changes affect soil biota, plant communities, and nutrient and carbon cycling in forest ecosystems.