Rocio was born in 1984 in Valladolid, Spain.

She holds two MSc degrees in mathematics and in statistics from the University of Valladolid, Spain. In 2009, she joined the Bioacoustics team at the University of Paris-Sud, where she worked on a cetacean acoustics project. In 2012, she joined the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) for a PhD programme on distance sampling methods development, supervised by Professor Len Thomas and Dr Tiago A Marques. In 2018, she graduated with a PhD from the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Her research is motivated by ecological applications, particularly related to wildlife conservation. She develops and applies statistical methods and associated software to estimate the size, density and distribution of wild animal populations, in particular, whale and dolphin populations.

At the LAB she develops techniques for monitoring changes in ecosystem health using bioacoustics.