Álvaro Chiner-Oms

I have a mixed academic background: on the one hand I studied a Technical Engineering in Computer Science (2007) and later a Degree in Biology (2013), as well as a Master's in Bioinformatics (2015). This mixed training has allowed me to specialize in the use of a wide range of computational techniques and bioinformatics tools. I obtained an FPU contract (2014) to carry out my doctoral thesis at the University of Valencia, studying the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). During my PhD, I spent 3 months (2017) in United Kingdom, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, hosted by Teresa Cortés’ group. After defending my thesis, in 2019 I began a postdoctoral stage at the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia (IBV-CSIC), hired under a European project at the Tuberculosis Genomics Unit (IP Dr. Iñaki Comas). There, I continued my research on the molecular evolution of the MTBC and taking responsibility for the bioinformatics structure of the unit. During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), I was part of the main core of the SeqCOVID-Spain consortium. Due to the work developed in SARS-CoV-2, I was offered a permanent contract at the IBV-CSIC (2020). My doctoral thesis obtained an extraordinary doctorate award (2021), and I was also the first classified in the 16th edition of the 'Ciutat d'Algemesí Scientific-Technical Award', in the Consolidated Young Researcher category (2021). I’ve recently joined the FISABIO-Salud Pública Foundation with a Ramón y Cajal contract (2021 call, shift for young doctors) to start my own research group.
Although my first manuscript was published in 2016, I currently have 33 JCR articles (28 Q1, 16 of them D1). Among them, several as first author in high-impact journals such as Science Advances, Nature Communications or Nature Genetics, and one as a corresponding author in PNAS. I have also several articles in collaboration with other groups, both national and international, on various topics such as epidemiology and evolution of mycobacteria, evolution of environmental pathogenic bacteria, molecular bases of skin diseases in animal models or epidemiology and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. As of today (01/12/2023) my h-index is 10 according to the Web of Science.

I have taught in the Department of Genetics at the University of Valencia for the Degree in Biology, as well as in the Master's Degree in Bioinformatics at the University of Valencia (148 hours to date, from 2015 to 2022). I have also been involved in the organization and teaching of 5 editions of the FISABIO Summer School (from 2016 to 2021) and the workshop 'Bioinformatic tools in TB genomics: pathogen diversity & host transcriptomics' organized by the Spanish Research Network on Mycobacteria (2021 ). I have also co-authored two popular articles in The Conversation magazine, one of them having more than 300,000 readings, 218 tweets and 5633 recommendations on social networks. I have participated as a member of evaluation committees of two evaluation agencies, ANECA (2019 and 2022) and Aqu Catalunya (2018 and 2019), in the evaluation and accreditation processes of doctoral programs in the biomedicine branch of 5 different Spanish universities.