Speakers

Alejandro Palacios
Medical Liaison, Probiotics International Ltd – (Protexin)
linkedin.com: Alejandro Palacios

Alejandro Palacios started his career as a researcher in the field of food microbiology, diagnostics and epidemiology. He also worked as Research and Development Manager in the food industry. In 2000, he moved to the Research Center for Microbial Disease at Osaka University, Japan, where he conducted research in HIV and Borna Disease viruses. In 2002, he joined the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste, Italy where he obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology. In 2008, he joined the Telomeres and Telomerase Laboratory at CNIO. There, he studied the role of SIRT1 in Ageing, Cancer and Stem Cell Biology.

In 2012, he became Research Associate and in 2014 a Senior Marie Curie Research Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. There, his research was aimed at the identification and characterisation of cellular factors that regulate cardiac progenitor cells in cardiovascular disease and their implications in Regenerative Medicine. He is currently a Medical Science Liaison at Probiotics International Ltd – Protexin Healthcare, a company dedicated to producing research based live bacteria products of the highest quality for human healthcare.

Fernando Ramón Olayo
Manager, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
linkedin.com: Fernando Ramón Olayo

Fernando Ramón obtained his bachelor in Biology at La Habana University. Next, he obtained his PhD in Biological Sciences at UCM in the Bioquemistry and Molecular Biology Department. His thesis work characterises the enzymes used in the industrial biotransformation of beta-lactamic antibiotics. He has been Associate Professor in his department at Biology College of UCM for more than 16 years. Additionally, he has worked in the early stages of drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for the las 21 years, focusing on the diseases hitting developing countries and helping the collaboration between the academic and the industrial professionals.

Fernando Peláez
Group Leader, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)
linkedin.com: Fernando Peláez

Fernando Peláez was born in Madrid in 1962. He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology in 1984 from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and carried out his PhD at the Centro de Biología Molecular. In 1989 he joined the Centro de Investigación Básica of Merck (CIBE), where he was responsible for fungal research focusing on the discovering of natural products with therapeutic potential. In 1999 he was appointed as Director of CIBE, leading a department of 70 people for nine years. In December 2008 he joined CNIO as Director of the Biotechnology Programme. Since October 2011 he is also the Head of the CNIO Director’s Office. 

He is author or co-author of more than 130 original papers, reviews and book chapters, and co-inventor of more than 40 patents on bioactive natural molecules. He has supervised five PhD projects and is deeply involved in education and training activities. He has been the Curator of the exhibition “Biotechnology: Quality of Life”, which was temporarily exhibited at the National Museum of Science and Technology during 2015. Since July 2014 he is Vicepresident of the Spanish Society of Biotechnology.