Vanesa Magar Brunner

After taking her Baccalauréat in Physics, Mathematics and Technology (Bac E) at the Lycée Franco-Mexicain in Mexico City in 1989, Magar moved to France and continued studying Physics, Maths, and Technology at the University of Nantes, but after starting her second year she decided to return to Mexico and register to the Physics and Mathematics degrees at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In 1992, Magar was selected by NASA to take part in a space life sciences training programme at Kennedy Space Center, to celebrate International Space Year.[3] Magar completed her Bachelors in physics at National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1996.[4] She moved to the UK for her Masters, graduating from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Cambridge University, in 1997.[4] She remained here for her PhD, working on fluid dynamics with Tim Pedley.[5][6] Together they studied the uptake of nutrients by swimming microorganisms.[7][8] She graduated in 2001.[4]

Magar remained at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Cambridge University, England, between 2001 and 2002, for her postdoctoral studies.[4] She joined Bangor University in 2002, researching the transport of sediment above rippled beds.[9] In 2005, she won a Research Councils UK Fellowship to work at the University of Plymouth.[10]

In 2008 she was made a Chartered Mathematician.[11] She is a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute,[12] and Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications since 2011. She was appointed a lecturer at the University of Plymouth in 2010. In 2014 she moved to the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, where she is an associate professor of Physical Oceanography.[13] She researches ways to mitigate climate change in the Sonoran Desert and projects related to renewable energy.[14] Vanesa is concerned that Mexico are not best exploiting marine energy.[15]

She is the vice president of the Unión Geofísica Mexicana for 2018 and 2019.[16][17] She contributed to the books Sustainable Energy Technologies and Wave and Tidal Energy.[18][19]

Magar was born in 1971 to Roger Bernard Daniel Louis Magar Vincent (1936- ), a physicist and renewable energy specialist, and Palmira Brunner Liebshard (1940-2018), a biologist turned palaeontologist. She was educated at the Lycée Franco-Mexicain, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and at Clare College and Wolfson College, Cambridge University.

In 2009, she married Markus S. Gross, an engineer turned geoscientist who also works at the Physical Oceanography Department, Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education. They have one son, Damián Suré Gross-Magar (born 14 April 2010).

She enjoys entertaining, reading, and hiking.