The Governing Board of the Society of Festeros, at the proposal of its president, has appointed as Pregonera of the Fiestas de Moros y Cristianos 2024 to the Ontinyentina Mariola Penadés Fons.

The professional career of Dr. Mariola Penadés has been broad and multidisciplinary. She has always devoted herself vocationally to the bio-health field, although within this she has moved from veterinary medicine to neuroscience, having studied higher education in both branches. Her family says that she is a scientist by profession and a “learner” by devotion, because she never stops incorporating new studies and experiences. That is why, in her day to day life, she has pushed herself to passionately carry out her research, teaching and scientific dissemination tasks in the United States, London and Spain.
In Spain, she has been for many years a biomedical researcher at FISABIO (Valencia) and a university lecturer at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Cardenal Herrera-CEU University of Valencia. In addition, she teaches Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, where she lives seasonally. Finally, she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at Kings College University (London).

She has dozens of articles published in international indexed journals, multiple academic awards. And, above all, she has been very committed to her task as a science communicator in different formats (scientific monologue, theater with science, etc.), for which she has also been awarded nationally on several occasions.
In June 2022, she was appointed by the City Council of Ontinyent to be part of the new Council of Publications and in September 2023 she was appointed General Director of Research and Innovation, under the Department of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana.

Within her altruistic activity, she participates very actively in the educational care of high ability students, as well as in the accompaniment of children who are alone in hospitals. In Ontinyent, she is co-founder and very active member of ANIMA, local entity of integrative care for cancer patients and their environment.