Carolina Tafalla Piñeiro

Carolina Tafalla is a Research Professor at the Animal Health Research Centre (CISA) of the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA), in turn part of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). In 2000 she obtained her PhD in Biology from the University of Santiago de Compostela, after working for 3 years at the Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas of Vigo (IIM-CSIC), studying the antiviral immune response in fish. In 2002 she was awarded an individual Marie Curie fellowship for a stay at the Centre de Recherche de Jouy-en-Josas (INRA, France), focused on the molecular biology of fish rhabdoviruses. In 2003 she returned to Spain with a Ramón y Cajal contract and founded the Fish Immunology and Pathology Group at CISA, which she currently leads.
Throughout her scientific career, Carolina Tafalla has published more than 130 research articles in international journals, as well as 10 book chapters. She has also supervised 5 doctoral theses and filed 4 patents.
In 2011 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to characterise fish B lymphocytes phenotypically and functionally. In 2016 she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to continue these studies in mucosae, and in 2022 an ERC Proof-of-Concept project to bring to market a therapeutic method against a parasitic disease in fish. She has also been principal investigator of several national projects, as well as of other collaborative European projects.
Since November 2024 the group is part of the Biotechnology Department of INIA-CSIC (Madrid). (Description curated from publicly available data.)