Since its establishment in 2006, the ES Department has become a reference in climate- and air quality-related research in Europe and beyond, as well as in health and other societal impacts of climate change.

The Global Health Resilience (GHR) group, within which the candidate would work, works on co-designing policy-relevant decision-support tools to enhance surveillance, preparedness, and response to global health challenges. The GHR group applies cutting-edge approaches to understand the links between climate change, socio-economic inequalities, and infectious disease emergence and spread, from local to global scales. It contributes to international initiatives to ensure these digital tools have a downstream impact to strengthen global health resilience to emerging threats.

Frontier Research
Climate change, environmental degradation, and socio-economic inequalities can increase the risk of infectious disease outbreaks and lead to excess mortality and morbidity. The goal of the Global Health Resilience (GHR) group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center is to co-design decision-support tools to enhance surveillance, preparedness, and response to global health challenges, including climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

At the GHR group, the researchers apply a transdisciplinary approach, co-developing solutions at the interface of epidemiology, climate science, planetary health, biology, statistical modelling, machine learning, and data science.

Their cutting-edge methodological research aims to understand the links between environmental change, socio-economic inequalities, and infectious disease emergence and spread from global to local scales.

Through a co-creation process, they develop indicators, impact-based forecasting models and early warning systems at sub-seasonal to decadal time scales, which help to anticipate future risk in collaboration with public health, disaster risk management, and humanitarian agencies all over the globe.

Moreover, the group works closely with climate scientists, software engineers and knowledge integration experts from across the Earth Sciences Department, as well as researchers specialising in disease intelligence data generation.

These collaborations ensure integration with the latest technology and novel data streams to strengthen decision-support tools for public health decision-makers that ultimately build resilience to emerging health threats and protect the most at-risk communities.

The research of the GHR group contributes to global initiatives to ensure digital tools have a downstream policy impact to strengthen global health resilience to emerging health threats.

The research carried out at CRAG spans from basic research in plant and farm animal molecular biology, to applications of molecular approaches for breeding of species important for agriculture and food production in close collaboration with industry. Specific topics of frontier research include: genomics, plant development, plant responses to stress, plant synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, gene editing techniques, etc.

Some scientific highlights reflecting the research conducted at CRAG are listed below:

– CRAG researchers identified a new microRNA from rice which originated from a transposable element and that regulates blast resistance by DNA methylation. Moreover, they have demonstrated that the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis confers protection to the blast fungus and makes rice plants more productive. The AM symbiosis represents an alternative to the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

– The attractive colors of many flowers and fruits result from the accumulation of health-promoting carotenoid pigments in specialized cellular structures called chromoplasts. A CRAG´s teams found that chromoplasts can be artificially generated from leaf chloroplasts by using an enzyme that synthesizes the carotenoid precursor phytoene. This synthetic system allows to boost the carotenoid content of green vegetables and forage crops, hence improving their nutritional quality.

– Fruit ripening is a main target in crop breeding, having a major effect in fruit shelf life and fruit quality. Melon is an interesting model and the genetic dissection of the control of this trait may help to obtain long shelf life varieties and ultimately lead to a reduction in food loss and waste.

– CRAG researchers found that insertions of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) are frequently associated with phenotypic variability of important agronomic traits in rice. Using MITE insertions in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) can uncover new genotype-to-phenotype associations and allow for discovering the genetic basis of important trait variability.

– The development of new plant varieties is a very slow process. CRAG researchers showed that ‘deep learning’ methods, inspired on how the human brain works, can help to improve prediction of new cultivars.

– Meat quality has an important genetic component. CRAG scientists have identified genomic regions and strong candidate genes associated with fatty acid composition in muscle and adipose tissue in pigs. These results are relevant for meat quality selection of commercial pig breeds.

Since BC3’s creation, we have sought to be a cutting-edge and motivating centre from which researchers can continue co-creating scientific knowledge, tools and methodologies on the causes and effects of climate change and contributing to solving the most pressing challenge modern humans have ever faced. Transdisciplinary research integrates knowledge through active collaboration across academic disciplines and with non-academic stakeholders.

Being a transdisciplinary researcher implies more than raising awareness through scientific evidence, it is a unique approach to engaging with different ways of knowing the world and generating new knowledge to address societal challenges. Transdisciplinarity moves us to understand the world in which we live and to find suitable and fair solutions. It brought us together to co-design and implement policies leading to sustainable development.

Researchers are organized in research groups that cover from fundamental research to technological applications, aligned with three main interdisciplinary research lines related to the important social challenges included in the 2030 agenda: Materials for digital information, materials for a sustainable world and materials for health. The large number of scientists belonging to ICMM allows us to face synergetic problems, sharing cutting-edge instrumentation and expertise.
Situated within the “UAM+CSIC International Excellence Campus”, ICMM maintains a robust partnership with the “Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM)”, fostering knowledge exchange and shared scientific resources. Our institute also establishes global collaborations with numerous universities and research centers, cultivating an atmosphere of dynamic scientific interchange and teamwork. We are deeply committed to internationalizing research, welcoming senior researchers, postdocs, and predoctoral visitors from around the world.

We place great emphasis on gender equality and ethical conduct in science. We promote an inclusive culture offering equal opportunities at all ranks, vigilantly mitigating any inappropriate gender-related behaviors. We encourage work-life balance, organize activities that advance ethical practices in scientific research, and diligently safeguard against any research misconduct, such as data falsification, improper authorship attribution, or inadequate data sharing. At ICMM, we not only pioneer scientific advancements but also uphold the highest standards of professional ethics and inclusivity.

List of research lines:

Materials for a Sustainable World: Materials for Energy and Materials for Environmental Remediation and Green Processes

Materials for Health: Nanoplatforms for Therapy and Diagnosis and Technologies and Instrumentation for Nanomedicine

Materials for Digital Information: Materials for Advanced Electronics and Photonics and Quantum Materials and Technologies

IBEC’s 2024-2027 scientific program focuses on 5 breakthrough scientific-technological areas to develop knowledge and technologies to answer fundamental biological questions and facilitate the uptake of Precision Medicine, Advanced and Emergent therapies and address Global Health and Pandemics. Our vision is conducting pioneering, high-impact basic and applied research addressing unmet biomedical needs through interdisciplinary bioengineering innovations. Our methodology involves fundamental, multi-disciplinary investigations to understand biological systems quantitatively from molecule, cell, tissue, organ to system levels to develop devices, therapies, and protocols leading to better diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of human diseases and improving quality of life.
​IBEC’s 5 Breakthrough Focus Areas:
​1-New information and data with advanced microscopy, imaging and biological ​mapping-G.Gomila,P. Gorostiza,G. Battaglia,I.Marco-Rius,B.Bolognesi,X. Rovira
​2-Engineering of molecular systems based on biological self-assembling, synthetic ​biology and nanomedicine for advanced therapeutic systems-S.Sánchez, S. Muro, ​E.Torrents, X.Fernández-Busquets,C. Rodríguez-Emmenegger
​3-Physical forces in Biology: tissue, cell and molecular mechanobiology-X.Trepat, P.​Roca-Cusachs, M.Salmerón-Sánchez
​4-Preserving, regenerating and fabricating human organs and tissues: Biomodels and ​tissue engineering-E. Martínez,E.Engel, N.Montserrat, J.A. del Río, Z. Álvarez
​5-Ubiquitous sensors, engineered living sensors and smart data analysis: ​Bioelectronic and biomedical signal processing-J. Samitier, J. Ramón, R. Jané, S. ​Marco