Montserrat Rivas received her B.Sc. degree in physics from the Basque Country University and her Ph.D. from the University of Oviedo (Spain), where she has been an associate professor since 2008. During her studies she carried out research in Laboratoire de Magnetisme et Optique (CNRS) de Bellevue (Paris) and Laboratoire Louis Néel (CNRS) de Grenoble (France). She has 24 years of experience in higher education, teaching applied physics for engineers and physicists. She has pioneered initiatives in bilingual teaching, e-campus, and game design to enhance education.

She is the leader of a research group of 15 people doing transdisciplinary research (physicists, chemists, and engineers working closely with biologists and medical doctors) on magnetic materials for bio-applications and energy. In 2017 and 2019, respectively, she was the general chair of the first conference on Nanomaterials Applied to Life Sciences and the 10th International Conference on Fine Particle Magnetism, both co-sponsored by the Magnetics Society. In 2020, she was appointed Chair of the Spanish Club of Magnetism.

She has been a member and a topic leader of the program committees of several Intermag, MMM, and Joint conferences, where she organized and chaired symposia on biomagnetism.

Montserrat is currently the Chief Open Access Editor of the Magnetics Society and Lead Editor of its special section in the journal, IEEE Access