Mariazel de la Candelas Maqueda López

Mariazel Maqueda López pursued her bachelor and master studies in telecommunications and nanotechnologies at several prestigious European universities (University of Granada, Spain; Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy; and Grenoble Institute of Technology; France). In 2017, she achieved her PhD in Microsystems and Microelectronics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Switzerland). After a lifetime of volunteering in the communities where she lived, she decided to travel to Kenya and volunteer in the slums of Nairobi under the guidance of the nonprofit organization Amani. This experience made her decide to professionally put her skills at the service of the most vulnerable people from that moment onwards, in what she would herself define as a "life epiphany". After this, she worked for three years for international nonprofit organisations in the field of sustainable development in Geneva (SéCoDev, Caritas Internationalis and B Lab Switzerland). In November 2020, she joined the EPFL EssentialTech Centre to kickstart its newly created PeaceTech Division. Since then, she leads the PeaceTech Division's activities to leverage in-house digital and physical tech-driven innovation to prevent violence and conflict and promote peace in the online and offline realms, with a special focus in fighting against technology-facilitated gender-based violence. She is driven by a deep will of bridging solutions based on multi-disciplinary approaches to the existing needs of the developing contexts.