María Rodríguez Martínez did her undergraduate studies in Physical Sciences at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She then did her PhD in Theoretical Cosmology, at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris. Her PhD research focused on developing cosmological models of the early evolution of the universe with additional spatial dimensions. After completing her PhD, she moved to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she focused on setting astrophysical bounds to theories that break Lorentz symmetry using the high-energy emissions from Gamma-Ray Bursts, extremely powerful explosions of gamma rays coming from outside our galaxy.

In 2007, she transitioned into the field of Systems Biology as a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (Israel). Her research was devoted to the development of quantitative descriptions of biological networks and the complex interactions within. In 2009, she moved to Columbia University where she developed quantitative models to understand cancer gene dysregulation.

María joined IBM as a Research Staff Member in November 2013. Her research at IBM focuses on integrating different high-throughput molecular datasets in order to build comprehensive molecular models of disease that can help clinicians to provide better diagnoses and suggest personalized therapies.