“I would call myself an adrenaline junkie: I go skydiving and scuba diving, I go on long runs, trek in the mountains and I love mountain climbing. In my view these are simply normal hobbies.” These are the exact words of Dr Marta Trapero, a lecturer from the Department of Basic Sciences at UIC Barcelona, who is also a researcher and a health economist.

This brief introduction is only the tip of the iceberg. Her love for (extreme) sports might seem like her most eyebrow-raising trait, but the title of this chapter of Ments Inquietes tells of another great love, her “passion for research”.

From her first days in academia, this person with a “ment inquieta” (inquisitive mind) knew she wanted to study Economics, and thus began her professional career in a field known as Health Economics. Marta is a leading expert in her field and has explained how this specialist discipline is “a science whose practitioners analyse the best way to distribute society’s scarce resources, in an attempt to achieve the best possible results in health, in terms of quality of life and life expectancy”.

Shifting the focus of her professional career towards the field of health has given this UIC Barcelona lecturer the opportunity to carry out research, which for her means finding answers to unsolved questions, discovering new things and changing them. Research is a vital and essential pursuit in today’s world, and according to Dr Trapero, undertaking research “can help change many people’s lives”.

Marta Trapero shares her passion for research and learning with her students, and after all, she has also learnt a great deal from them, members of the next generation.

You may be wondering about the research projects our protagonist has led. To find out more, you’ll need to watch the video! Needless to say, you will be truly astonished.