Our new visitingresearchers at the CNIO, CNIC and IAC

Fundación Occident Visiting Researchers Programme with the CNIO, the CNIC and the IAC

The international prestige of the Spanish Science Association, the quality of its programmes and projects and the successful results obtained attract visitors from the scientific community around the world.

Convinced of the importance of promoting interaction in the field of research to contribute to the advancement of science, our Foundation collaborates with various scientific bodies, which are attended by prestigious researchers in the field of research with the Visiting Researchers programme Fundación Occident. 

This programme involves bringing internationally renowned scientists to the Spanish research centres, with the aim of deepening the scientific relationship of the host research group with the researcher's centre of origin, and, on the other hand, through new lines of action.

In 2009, it began a strong relationship with the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), a national and international public institution in research, diagnosis and treatment of cancer; in 2013, with the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (National Centre for Cardiovascular Research, CNIC) in order to encourage the advancement of studies in the field of cardiology and its transfer to treating patients; And in 2014, we started collaborating with the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), an international research centre with observatories in Tenerife and La Palma.

 

Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovascular (National Centre for Cardiovascular Research)

Dr Carlos Morillo

Dr. Carlos A. Morillo holds a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences and Senior Clinical Researcher at the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of the University of Calgary, in Calgary, Canada. He held the position of Director of the Cardiology Division of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute, Cummings School of Medicine, University of Calgary, and Director of Cardiology for the Calgary & Southeast Alberta region, Alberta Health Services, between 2016 and 2022. He was the director of the cardiac arrhythmias and stimulation service, and the syncope unit at McMaster University from 2002-2014.

Its main research areas are related to the design of clinical studies in cardiac arrhythmias, syncope and treatment and management of Chagas disease. Morenillo has been interested in exploring the role of cardiac autonomic regulation and has published several studies that analyse the role of baroreflexes and sympathetic traffic in different clinical situations such as sudden death, stroke, neurocardiogenic syncope and Chagas cardiomyopathy. 

 

Dr. Mark Hlatky

Dr. Hlatky is a cardiologist and Professor of Health and Medicine Policies at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His main fields of research are clinical trials and clinical research methods.Dr Hlatky has participated in numerous large multi-centre randomised clinical trials, including studies on coronary revascularisation, the treatment of acute myocardial infarction, hormone therapy to prevent cardiovascular diseases in women, and the treatment of potentially fatal ventricular arrhythmias. He was a pioneer in collecting data on economic and quality of life results as part of randomized trials, which has become a standard tool in the research of results. He has directed large research studies on coronary revascularisation, sudden cardiac death, implantable defibrillators, heart failure and coronary artery disease. It has also developed decision models to assess the effectiveness and profitability of a wide range of clinical strategies, such as the prevention of sudden cardiac death, the use of tests to guide the preventive treatment of heart diseases, the use of genetic tests in cardiovascular medicine and the management of non-cardiac surgery. His current research focuses on the effects of adverse events during pregnancy on women's long-term cardiovascular health.

 

Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (National Cancer Research Centre)

Dr Yardena Samuels

Professor Yardena Samuels is a cancer geneticist at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences and also director of the Onnell Moross Integrated Cancer Center, the Ekard Institute for Cancer Research and holder of the Kfamily Chair. Prof. Samuels has received the EACR Award for Cancer Research from the Pezoller Foundation, the Youdim Family Award for Excellence in Cancer Research, the Michael Bruno Memorial Award and the Sergio Lombroso Prize in Cancer Research cancer, is an elected member of EMBO and the elected chairman. Of the European Association for Cancer Research. He worked as a postdoctoral intern at the professor Vogelstein's laboratory at Johns Hopkins University from 2003 to 2006, where he was the first to discover the high frequency of mutations in the PIK3CA gene in human cancers and then served as an assistant professor at NIHs before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2012. 

Professor Samuels'laboratory seeks to identify and characterize genetic mutations that play a role in the progression of skin melanoma and to outline combinations of target proteins to achieve a lasting control of the disease. His laboratory identified new melanoma promoters, new oncogenic pathways and derived the first repertoires of complete melanoma exome, which resulted in five publications in Nature Genetics and a rich genetic database, which was revealed to the website of the SoCMIC (Cancer Catalogue). For use by the cancer community. His laboratory was part of the TCGA working group that published the genomic classification of cutaneous melanoma and one of his studies paved the way for a Phase II clinical study. 

 

Tak Mak

Dr. Tak Wah Mak is a Canadian medical researcher, geneticist, oncologist and biochemist.

He is currently senior science staff at the Ontario Cancer Institute; University of Toronto Professor; Director of the Advanced Medical Discovery Institute of the University Health Network of Toronto; And professor at the University of Hong Kong.

He studied Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Wisconsin, USA, and obtained his doctorate at the University of Alberta, Canada.

His research interests focus on immune recognition and regulation, as well as cell survival and death in normal and malignant cells.It was widely known for its discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1983 and for its pioneering work in genetics and immunology. 

His most recent work includes leading the creation of a series of genetically altered mice that have been shown to be fundamental to the misalignment of intracellular programs that govern the development and function of the immune system, as well as the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis, cell survival and apoptosis. His laboratory team is an expert in basic research and translational cancer research both in vitro and in vivo. For example, they recently determined that T-cells express the prototypical acetylcholine neurotransmitter (ACh), which dilates blood vessels, slowing blood flow enough to improve the entry of T cells in infected tissues and ultimately allowing the chronic elimination of the infection. More recently, they have determined that IDH mutations are involved in the cancer and epigenetic alterations.

 

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

Dr. Santi Cassisi is a world-renowned expert in stellar evolution and the main creator and maintainer of the widely used BaSTI (a Bag of Stellar Tracks and Isochrones) stellar model and isochrone library. 

In 1993, Cassisi began his career at the Observatorio Astronómico de Meudon-París with a scholarship from the French Government's Ministry of Scientific Research. Subsequently, between 1995 and 1997, he completed his doctoral thesis in Physics at the University of L'Aquila.

Since 1998, Dr Cassisi has been a staff researcher at the INAF - Collurania Astronomical Observatory, also known as the Teramo Observatory, located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. His main fields of research are theoretical stellar evolution and its application to the study of galactic and extragalactic stellar populations. In this field, he has published some 450 scientific papers, some 290 of which are reference publications, and two monographs for students and researchers.

Dr. Vanessa Hill is Director of Research at the CNRS, at Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Nice, France.

Its main field of research is galactic archaeology, focused on the search for the signatures of the formation and evolution of our galaxy in the kinematics and chemistry of its star constituents; the search for extremely metal-poor stars (EMPS) in our galaxy and its satellites; and the chemical composition of EMPS to probe the nature of the first stars. 

Dr Hill is also interested in studying the evolution of small scale galaxies, such as dwarf galaxies and Magellanic Clouds, as well as the study of chemical abundances on the surface of stars to restrict stellar nucleosynthesis. Throughout her scientific career, she has written 191 publications in peer-reviewed articles, cited about 15700 times, and has presented 19 guest reviews at international conferences.