Noemí Arias Rueda

Noemí is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri. Noemí focuses on understanding the mechanisms of how fat accumulates and distributes in the body to find therapeutic targets to treat metabolic disorders such as obesity, fatty liver disease, or cardiovascular disease. Noemí graduated in Pharmacy at the University of the Basque Country. She also completed a Master in Nutrition and Health followed by a Ph.D. in the Department of Pharmacy and Food Science at the same University. During her pre-doctoral stage, Noemí spent 6-months at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, to complete her international Ph.D. studies. Shortly after defending her thesis, Noemí moved to the US with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Basque Government. Noemí collaborates in the E-visibility program and ECUSA communication, increasing the dissemination of scientific projects made by Spanish scientists.

Virginia del Solar

Virginia, born in Asturias and holder of a degree in Chemistry from the Universidad de Oviedo, earned her doctorate in Chemistry from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2012, moving to Buffalo (New York, USA) few weeks later. She was Associate Postdoctoral Researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo where she studied the involvement of lipids in different biological processes and the effect of synthetic glycosides on the inflammatory response. Subsequently, she worked as a Research Associate at Brooklyn College and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City where her research focused on the distribution of gold antitumor complexes as antibody drug-conjugates (ADCs) or peptide nanoparticles. She is currently working on biomarker discovery as a scientist at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, a UK-based company that collaborates with universities and other companies in order to achieve safer, more effective, scalable and affordable cell and gene therapies.

Leire Abalde Atristain

Leire is a neuroscientist from Donostia-San Sebastian who completed her undergraduate studies in Biotechnology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a master’s in Biomedical Research at the Pompeu Fabra University, also in Barcelona. Sponsored by a predoctoral fellowship from the La Caixa Foundation, Leire moved to the US in 2013 to obtain her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University, where she was recognized with a Young Investigator Award for her thesis work. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Marc Freeman at Oregon Health & Science University, where she studies the role of glial cells in the degeneration of neurons in the central nervous system. Leire joined the ECUSA’s e-Visibility program in 2020 because of her passion for science communication, her conviction that without Science there is no future, and her STEMinist ideals. Since 2021 she also leads MECUSA in its mission to empower women scientists, improve their visibility, and advocate for gender equity in science.

Fernando de Miguel

Fernando is a molecular biologist with vast experience in cancer research. He studied a degree in Biochemistry at the University of Navarra (UNAV) prior to an MSc. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). He returned to Pamplona, where he obtained her PhD at the Center for Applied Medicina (CIMA) at the University of Navarra He moved to the USA in 2016 to study epigenetic mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies e immunotherapies in lung cancer as a postdoctoral researchers at the Yale Cancer Center, in Yale University, New Haven, CT. Currently, he works as a Senior Scientist at the company Tyra Biosciences in San Diego, CA, where he researches new targeted therapies for cancer and other diseases.

Blanca Pérez del Palomar Asin

Blanca has a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of the Basque Country. Thanks to an FPU grant from the Department of Education and Science in Spain, she was able to do a pre-doctoral stay at Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri, USA). After finishing her doctoral thesis in Spain, she returned to St. Louis to continue working in Jordan G. McCall’s lab. Her research focuses on the study of the neurological roots of mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, through the generation of animal models. She joined E-visibility to increase the impact and visibility of the work of Spanish scientists in the USA.

Carmen Morcelle

Carmen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard (Cambridge, MA). After finishing a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Alcalá, she completed a research master’s degree at the University College London (United Kingdom) and later obtained a PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona. After a first two-and-a-half-year postdoc at Fudan University in Shanghai, she moved to Boston, where she spent a year working in a laboratory at Harvard/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In 2022, she joined the Ragon Institute, where she is currently working on understanding how cells of the immune system are able to survive and function within unfavorable environments. In ECUSA, Carmen is co-Chair of Communication, she actively collaborates with the Women in Science committee (MECUSA) and she is also on the board of ECUSA Boston.

Marta Galán-Díez

Marta is a biologist specialized in hematological cancer. He received his B.Sc. in Biology and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. During his first postdoc at the Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology at Columbia University, focused his research on understanding how the gut microbiota regulates intestinal immune homeostasis. Although she is a molecular biologist and immunologist by training, she later broadened her scientific interest to hematology, in particular the bone marrow microenvironment, trying to find innovative ways to treat hematological disorders. Marta did her second postdoc in the laboratory of Dra. Kousteni, as a Research Associate Scientist in the Department of Cell Physiology and Biophysics at Columbia University, where she has studied how leukemic cells communicate with their “healthy” neighboring cells (stroma), and how this influences cancer progression. His most recent work has profound implications for the treatment of hematological malignancies in general, and leukemia in particular. Over the next few months, Marta will join Regeneron as a Staff Scientist. Her passion and motivation for science communication have led her to collaborate in the E-visibility program with the aim of disseminating the scientific achievements of Spanish scientists in the United States.

Our collaborator Leire Abalde-Atristain from E-Visibility talks with the rising star Paula Montero Atienza about her engineer career path from Valencia to the United States, her experience working on the startup Medcura Inc that is shaping up the future of bleeding management.

Our team member from E-Visibility Fernando de Miguel talks to Dr. Fernando Alemán Guillen, co-founder and CSO of the startup Navega Therapeutics which plans to develop a CRISPR/Cas9 in the treatment of chronic pain.

For more information about Navega Therapeutics or Fernando Alemán visit their website or take a look at this really interesting News & Views from ECUSA in which he summarizes his research.