Dr. Beninca serves as the Director of the UCLA Mitochondria and Metabolism Imaging Core facility. In this role, she serves UCLA researchers and companies looking for specialized imaging services in mitochondria, a very small field with growing interest as for the major function of this organelle in the body. In only two years at UCLA, the Core was part of two Sponsorship agreements between Pharma Companies and UCLA startups. More specifically, the Microscopy Core signed agreements with the companies to develop the imaging experiments needed. Dr. Beninca not only developed the imaging experiments but led the projects and for that reason the Core not only benefited from the revenue generated but also from the scientific papers now under revision.

More recently, the Imaging Core started another translational project in collaboration with a new UCLA-originated biotech company. In this work, Dr. Beninca is co-mentoring undergraduate students, by training and supervising image acquisition and analysis, as well as two postdoctoral fellows in the development of their experimental plan. This collaboration is a result of her expertise in the field, for which she was recently awarded one of Europe’s most
competitive and prestigious research fellowships, the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) 2020. In the same path, her MSCA project was recently approved in Italy for an AFM-Telethon Marathon, for which she is a collaborator at UCLA and the goal for this is the co-mentoring of PhD students and post-doctoral fellows in both countries.

Additionally, Dr. Beninca has worked in mitochondrial rare diseases and imaging fields for more than a decade. She received her scientific training in the most prestigious research institutes in the world like the Mitochondrial Biology Unit from the University of Cambridge and the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Beninca has a proven research track record that has contributed significantly to the mitochondrial disorders and imaging fields.
Her published work has been cited more than 700 times, an extremely high number that clearly shows her prestigious standing in the field.