My scientific interests are related to biomedical issues. Indeed, my main motivation has always been to contribute to solve problems related to human health. As microorganisms have always fascinated me too, I combined my areas of interest to work in the field of medical microbiology. I have been working with human pathogens, in particular with A. baumannii, an important human pathogen. My work focuses on identifying and characterizing aspects that contribute to the success of A. baumannii as a pathogen in the clinical setting, being key for this purpose its ability to rapidly acquire resistance to antibiotics as well as certain physiological traits related to persistence in the environment. In fact, I worked for many years on mechanisms of resistance to last generation antibiotics, and also discovered the capability of these microorganisms to sense and respond to light, a feature considered previously to be restricted to phototrophs. The technical expertise I acquired during all these years allows me to perform genetic manipulations in A. baumannii and other microorganisms, as well as to dominate diverse molecular and cellular techniques. The formation of human resources capable of confronting the challenge that multidrug resistant microorganisms impose in the clinical setting is essential. In this context, I mentored doctoral (5) and undergraduate students (9), as well as health care professionals (2), and received and administered financial funding, which supported my research. Finally, I have been teaching general microbiology courses such as bacterial physiology and bacterial genetics for 22 years, where I had the chance to specialize and update permanently in most aspects related to bacterial physiology including perception and responses to environmental clues, key topics involved in the present project.