Emilia Matallana, Santiago F. Elena

Last Tuesday, July 28, 2020, the Governing Committee of the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology I2SysBio (joint center Universitat de València-CSIC) decided to propose Emilia Matallana Redondo as the new director of the I2SysBio and Santiago F. Elena Fito as vice director. Their candidacies had been proposed unanimously by the Board of the Institute, after hearing the Scientific Senate. The appointments of both co-directors have been ratified by the Rector of the University of Valencia and the President of the CSIC on August 10. Previously, on July 23, the Rectorate of the University of Valencia and the Presidency of the CSIC had accepted the resignation of the previous co-directors, José Luis García and Juli Peretó, recognizing their work in the creation and consolidation of I2SysBio.

Emilia Matallana and Santiago Elena will serve as co-directors of the I²SysBio in a new stage of the institute marked by the readjustment of the research spaces available for the joint center.

Emilia Matallana is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the University of Valencia (UV) and co-leads with Agustín Aranda the Industrial Yeast Biotechnology group of the I²SysBio. Dr. Matallana received her doctorate from UV in 1989 and spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He has developed his research career in the field of wine yeasts, for more than 20 years as a member of the scientific faculty of the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA) of the CSIC. She has been principal investigator of various State Plan projects and contracts with private entities and has directed 12 doctoral theses. Emilia Matallana carries out her teaching duties at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the UV where, among other subjects, she teaches the subject of Food Biotechnology. Between 2005 and 2011 she was Vice Dean of Studies at her faculty, a period in which she led the latest reform of the curriculum for the Degree in Biology. He has been involved in multiple educational innovation projects such as the Motivem Program to promote entrepreneurship in classrooms. In 2011 he received the Teaching Excellence Award from the Social Council of the UV. He has recognized 4 six-year research periods and one transfer period.

Santiago F. Elena is a research professor at the CSIC and leads the Evolutionary Systems Virology group at the I²SysBio. He is a professor of Genetics (on leave) at the UV and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He received his doctorate from the UV in 1995 and for two years was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. Dr. Elena is a specialist in theoretical and experimental approaches to the study of the evolution of viruses and their interactions with hosts. He has extensive experience in both viruses that infect animals, including humans, and plant pathogens. He has led numerous research projects financed with European, state or regional public funds, as well as contracts with private entities, and has directed 16 doctoral theses. He was recently awarded a project funded by the CSIC for the study of new therapeutic strategies against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Dr. Elena co-leads the Associated Unit I²SysBio-Centre for Mathematical Research “Dynamic Systems and Computational Virology”. He is an elected member of EMBO and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In 2020 he was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The research teams led by Emilia Matallana and Santiago Elena were part of the founding nucleus of I²SysBio.