Dr. Birkenfeld is a Juan de la Cierva researcher at the Institute of Optics of the Spanish National Research Council (IO-CSIC) in Spain.  She pursued her Ph.D. at the Visual Optics & Biophotonics Lab (IO-CSIC) with Susana Marcos and received her Ph.D. in physics from Complutense University. Birkenfeld received several postdoctoral fellowships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard Medical School and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, USA before returning to Spain. 

Her research is motivated by solving currently unmet medical needs and focuses on applications in eye and skin research, using state-of-the-art techniques from optics, photonics and artificial intelligence. She is currently the local coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020 project Imcustomeye, a multinational consortium developing novel technologies based on photonics and modeling approaches to detect changes in ocular biomechanics, a promising biomarker for the early detection of various eye conditions.

Birkenfeld won the prestigious Spanish L'Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” award in 2021 and was included in the EVI TOP LIST of Women in European Vision Research. She is chair-elect of Optica's Microscopy and OCT Technical Group and co-founder and faculty of MITlinQ, an MIT-based program to accelerate innovation technology.