Maria J. Sanz is Scientific Director of the Basque Centre of Climate Change, a Research Centre based in the Basque Country which aims to contribute to long term research on climate change while emphasizing the bridging of scales and scientific languages to support policy- and decision-making in economically efficient and socially equitable ways.  Her own research agenda focuses on effective land use decisions, the optimal allocation of land resources for sustainable and efficient development. Prior to joining the Basque Centre for Climate Change, she was UNREDD Program Team Leader at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and Senior Officer at the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) supporting Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry, Agriculture and REDD+ negotiations up to 2011. Before 2007, she was Air Pollution Effects and Atmospheric Chemistry Programme Director at the Center for Environmental Studies of the Mediterranean and advisor to the Spanish Minister of Environment. She was a lead author of Fourth Assessment Report and five methodological reports of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), recently elected member of the Task Force Bureau for the Seventh IPCC Cycle. She holds a PhD in Biology by the University of Valencia, and worked extensively in Air Pollution and Climate Change feedbacks in the Mediterranean Regions after she ended her post-Doctoral grant at the Arizona State University.