Antonio Alcamí

Research Professor of the CSIC at the Centro de Biología Molecular (CBM) Severo Ochoa, where he leads the Immunity and Viromics laboratory. After his doctoral thesis at the CBM, he moved in 1991 to the University of Oxford (UK) and in 1998 received a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship to establish his research group at the University of Cambridge (UK). He joined the CSIC in 2003 and was Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK) until 2012. His research focuses on immune evasion by poxviruses and, since the COVID-19 pandemic, on airborne virus transmission. He works on emerging viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, mpox virus and avian influenza virus. He is also interested in metagenomic studies for the discovery of new viruses in polar environments, describing for the first time the virus community in Antarctic and Arctic lakes. He has carried out 6 campaigns in Antarctica and has been a visiting professor at the University Centre in Svalbard (Norway) in the Arctic. He recently led the CSIC-UNESPA Antarctic Expedition 2025, starting studies on the entry of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus into Antarctica. He was manager (2013-2016) and collaborator (2012, 2017) of the Biomedicine programme of the Ministry of Science and Innovation. He has been an adviser to the World Health Organization Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research since 1999. He received the Alberto Sols Award for research career in 2018 and is a corresponding academician of the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia. He has been principal investigator of 50 research projects, including 20 international ones (United Kingdom, USA, New Zealand and European Union). He has published 160 scientific articles in international journals and is inventor of 18 patents.