Career Alternatives

Belén Garijo

Belén Garijo is a member of the Executive Board of Merck and CEO of Healthcare.  She started her career as a practicing physician at La Paz hospital (Madrid) before moving to the pharmaceutical industry. She held several local and global executive positions, both in R&D and commercial, at various companies at the forefront of the Healthcare sector. Then Belén served as the Senior Vice President of Global Operations Europe at Sanofi-Aventis and Global Integration Leader of Genzyme after its acquisition by Sanofi. In 2011, she joined Merck as Chief Operating Officer of the Biopharma business, becoming President and CEO of Healthcare in 2015. Under her leadership, Healthcare at Merck has become a key player in the area of oncology, immunology and immuno-oncology, after the profound repositioning of the portfolio, the reorganization of R&D and the transformation of the commercial model. She has forged two major global alliances to further contribute to the portfolio’s maximization and has focused on globalization by expanding the business to growth markets as Japan and the U.S.

Manuel Pérez

New Perspectives in Science

LabVisor

LabVisor is a group of PhD students that want to change things. Have you entered a research group thinking they are your best choice and then reality has hit you? There are multiple databases with the publications and scientific papers of all research groups … But has anyone told you how is the behavior of their scientists? The value they give to the enthusiasm and dedication of the fellows? Well, this is the kind of platform we want to build with your help. This is the reason why they have created this anonymous network, built among all, whether you are an undergraduate student, master, PhD student, technician, postdoc … in which you can expose your experience in each laboratory and thus inform and help others to make their choice. Thus, to be able to choose a research group that not only has scientific quality but HUMAN. This election will determine that the following years are the best or the worst of your academic life.

 

Yorick Peterse

Yorick Peterse has a background in biomedical sciences and psychology, for which he studied in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany. His PhD research in Munich, Germany, explored brain activity related to mental health disorders like anxiety disorders, depression and schizophrenia. During this period, he was one of the elected representatives of the ±5000 PhD candidates of the Max Planck Society, striving to improve working conditions for researchers. Additionally, he has been involved in science communication, with a special focus on articles and workshops about mental health-related topics. He has written several contributions for online and print outlets about the mental well-being of PhD candidates, which included proposals for improvements.

José Blanca

José Blanca is a geneticist working mainly on the domestication of tomato using population genetics approaches at Universitat Politécnica de Valencia. He is also a science enthusiast and has been very interested in various side topics, from theoretical physics to philosophy of science, to which he has devoted a good deal of his free time during the last years. José has been actively participating in science divulgation, as one of the organizers of Escépticos en el Pub in Valencia and has participated several times in the radio program A ciencia cierta, as an expert in genetics and evolution. He will give a talk in the CNIC PhDay about the foundations and principles of science: what is science and what is not.

Mate Palfy

Mate Palfy is from Budapest, Hungary, where he studied Biology at the Eotvos Lorand University. Following a year in Vienna at MFPL for his Master’s project, he pursued his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, studying genome activation in zebrafish embryos. Mate works as a Community Manager for preLights, a preprint highlighting service that was launched in 2018 by The Company of Biologists (a publisher based in Cambridge, UK). His main tasks involve building a community of early-career researchers around preLights, supporting them, and evolving and promoting this new initiative.

Ulf Sandström

Dr. Ulf Sandström is docent in Technology and Social Change from Linkoping University and currently a part-time researcher at the department for Industrial Economics and Management of the ITM School. He has recently been a visiting professor in Science Studies at the medical faculty of Gothenburg University (50%) and at Orebro University (50%) as well as visiting prof at KTH (2010-13). Sandström took his PhD in 1989 and then entered into science policy studies. He combines an interest in quantitative analytical methods with the use of qualitative standard methods. He has developed a research line that uses publication data in combination with other register data. One of his achievements is a ranking of all Swedish researchers from 2008-2015. His research covers the following themes: research productivity and efficiency; gender issues and excellence; bias in peer review; the role of mobility in research; interdisciplinary research. Sandström publishes in academic journals such as Journal of Informetrics, PLoS ONE, Scientometrics, Research Evaluation, Science and Public Policy, Research Policy and others.

Ángel Abril-Ruiz

Ángel Abril-Ruiz began his professional career linked to the telecommunications and business sector. He graduated in Technical Telecommunication Engineering (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 2001) and studied Business and Business Management. As of 2010, he was interested in individual behavior, entering disciplines as emotional intelligence, personal growth, neuroscience or neuromarketing. Therefore, he started his PhD in the area of Consumer Behavior (application of sensory marketing and evolutionary psychology to consumer decisions). When he had almost completed the doctoral thesis, he presented the resignation to his defense due to the moral conflict that led him to discover the fabrication of data (scientific fraud) that his thesis director had done. After that, Ángel published an essay with which he tried to find an explanation for the dishonest behavior of his mentors during his PhD years, in addition to providing the data that proved his accusations of scientific fraud. In 2019, he published his second essay “Rotten apples. Bad research practices and neglected science”.

 

Stephen Curry

Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London where he also serves as the Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. For many years he has been a writer and campaigner on a range of scientific issues including open access, research assessment, research funding and science policy. He is currently chair of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Workshops 2019

Laura Grau

Laura Grau was born in Reus, Tarragona (Spain). She graduated in Biology in 2002 at the Universidad de Barcelona and obtained her PhD in 2007 at the Cell Biology, Physiology and Inmunology Dept., at the Medical School of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, supervised by Dr. Escrich. In October 2008 she moved to Madrid to carry out her postdoct in the Dept. Molecular Pathology of the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), supervised by Dr. Sánchez-Carbayo.  In December 2011 she started working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas Alberto Sols (CSIC), under the supervision of Dr. Villalobo.  In June 2012 she joined the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), where she currently forms part of the Research Office as a Department manager, with direct involvement in the preparation and application of national and international scientific proposals, periodic reports, personnel recruitment and logistics supervision.

Laura Conejero

Laura Conejero graduated in Biology at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid). She obtained her PhD in 2006 (Universidad Complutense) working on the development of a murine model of allergic asthma to olive pollen proteins and testing the role of CpG as potential therapeutic and prophylactic interventions in this physiological model. During her postdoctoral research at the LSHTM (2008-2013, London, UK), she was focused on the complex interplay between host-pathogen interactions during chronic melioidosis, studying lung immune responses to bacterial infections. In 2013, Laura moved to CNIC (Madrid, Spain), where she was awarded a RESPIRE2 fellowship (Marie-Curie ERS COFUND) to carry out a project aimed at evaluating the role of different subsets of dendritic cells in asthma. Since July 2017 she is working in the medical department at Inmunotek (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid), where she is involved in preclinical and clinical studies focused on immunotherapy, including bacterial vaccines and allergy.

Guadalupe Sabio

Guadalupe Sabio graduated from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the Universidad de Extremadura in 2000. Her PhD, under the direction of Dr. Ana Cuenda, was conducted both at the Universidad de Extremadura and at the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit in Dundee (UK). Her thesis work demonstrated the redundant function of p38-gamma and p38-delta, and showed that both kinases can phosphorylate SAP97 and SAP90. For her postdoc, Guadalupe moved to the University of Massachusetts Medical School to work with Dr. Roger Davis. Her work focused on the tissue-specific roles of JNK1, using mice with conditional deletion of JNK1 in different tissues. Through this work she made important contributions to the understanding of the tissue-specific roles of JNK1 and its implication in the pathogenesis of type II diabetes. Dr. Sabio returned to Spain in 2009 with a Ramón y Cajal contract to study diseases associated with obesity (diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer). She joined the CNIC in 2011 where she leads the Stress kinases in Diabetes, Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease laboratory.

Pilar Martín

Pilar Martín graduated in Biology at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, 1996) and obtained her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Ardavín at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, 2001) and in collaboration with Dr. Hans Acha-Orbea at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Laussane Switzerland). Her work focused on characterizing the different subpopulations of Denditric Cells (DCs) in lymphoid organs. During this period, she made relevant contributions, such as the characterization of a new subtype with tolerogenic potential (murine Plasmacytoid DCs), that were published in different international and high-impact publications. Then Dr. Martín, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centro de Biología Molecular (CSIC), worked on the function of atypical PKCs in the NFκB pathway in the immune system. In 2007, with a Ramón y Cajal position, she joined the CNIC. Since 2012, Dr.Martín is Assistant Professor at CNIC where she leads the Regulatory Molecules of Inflammatory Processes laboratory, which studies the role of Th17, Regulatory T cells (Tregs) and microRNAs in the development of autoimmunity and cardiomyopathies in mice and human.

Juan José Infante

Dr. Juan José Infante graduated as PhD in Sciences -Molecular Biology and Microbiology- at the University of Cádiz in 2002. He completed his academic background with a 5-year position as senior scientist in the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). After that, he joined the private biotechnology sector in 2007 as Chief Scientific Officer of Bionaturis, today part of the group for development and manufacturing organization ADL Bionatur Solutions, S.A., where he holds the same position. He has led programs for development of biotechnological active principles, consolidating partnerships with international pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies in projects dedicated to prevention of infectious diseases or immunomodulation. He is also responsible for innovation and creation of intellectual property. Since 2013, Dr. Infante is also the CEO of Vaxdyn, a start-up company based in Seville developing vaccines against bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics, where he is also a shareholder. Dr. Infante teaches a Biotechnology course and is responsible for Biotechnology Master Students in the University Pablo de Olavide of Seville.

Teresa Rayón

Teresa Rayón is an experimental biologist and her research focuses on stem cells and embryonic development. In 2014, she got a doctorate in sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid under the direction of Miguel Manzanares at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC). Teresa joined James Briscoe’s lab in January 2016 as an EMBO post-doctoral fellow to understand species-specific timescales during motor neuron formation.

Closing lecture 2019

Jesús Marco de Lucas

Dr. Marco de Lucas is a Research Professor at CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), and currently the Vice President of Scientific and Technical Research.

He obtained his PhD in Experimental Particle Physics in 1989. He has been coordinator of research activities related to the Higgs boson at DELPHI at CERN. Since 1997, Dr. Marco de Lucas is also member of the CMS collaboration (Compact Muon Solenoid) in LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN, in which he is involved in a variety of computing sub-projects.

He was the director of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA) from 2003 to 2007, and the scientific and technical coordinator of the Physics Area at CSIC from 2008 to 2010. Dr. Marco de Lucas is promoter of the research line in advanced computing and e-science in IFCA. He has also coordinated several European projects, such as Interactive EU Grid, DEEP-Hybrid DataCloud. He is the proponent and co-director of the first official university master’s degree in Data Science (UIMP-University of Cantabria) launched in 2017.