Since 2024, Alfred Fillol, Arnau Montagud and Guillem Salazar have been part of the Faculty of the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology I2SysBio (a joint centre of the University of Valencia and the CSIC) as CDEIGENT Researcher, CSIC Senior Scientist and Ramon y Cajal Researcher, respectively.

Alfred Fillol-Salom obtained his doctorate at the University of Glasgow studying the fundamental aspects of a new family of mobile genetic elements, specifically bacteriophage satellites. He also researched different aspects of the bacteriophage life cycle at Imperial College London, where he later began his independent career thanks to the Imperial College Research Fellowship grant. In 2024, Alfred joined I2SysBio as a CDEIGENT researcher on the GenT (Generalitat Valenciana) programme, leading his own research group, ‘Ecology of mobile genetic elements’. His current research is based on understanding the different aspects of the biological cycle of mobile genetic elements in order to explain how they are mobilised and what adaptive advantage – such as antibiotic resistance – they can provide to their host. This knowledge could help in the future to find new ways to treat infections caused by pathogenic bacteria.

More information: i2sysbio - group  https://i2sysbio.es/groups/28/

Arnau Montagud is a biologist with a PhD in mathematics from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). In his thesis he explored the modelling of biological systems for the production of biofuels. He continued his career in the Computational Systems Cancer Biology group at the Institut Curie and later joined the Computational Biology group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). In January 2024, he set up his own laboratory at I2SysBio as a Distinguished Researcher, with the support of CIDE-GenT funding (Generalitat Valenciana), and then obtained a position as CSIC Tenured Scientist in December 2024. Arnau has contributed to the development of tools for the analysis of Boolean models in cancers, the PROFILE method for the personalisation of models using patient data and the PhysiBoSS multiscale modelling tool for the simulation of biological tissues. His group ‘Systems Biology Modelling’ focuses on deciphering the mechanisms of diseases through personalised computational models in biomedical and biotechnological projects.

More information: i2sysbio - group    https://i2sysbio.es/groups/12/

Guillem Salazar is a microbial ecologist dedicated to the study of the factors that govern microbial diversity, function and activity in marine ecosystems. He has a degree in Biology from the University of Valencia (UV) and a PhD in Oceanography from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. During his doctorate at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM, CSIC) he studied the global biogeography of marine microorganisms, with a special emphasis on the deep ocean. During his postdoctoral phase at ETH (Switzerland) he focused on differentiating changes in gene expression from organism replacements as two response strategies to temperature changes in the global ocean. He has also contributed to the development of open-source bioinformatics software for the taxonomic characterisation of microbial communities. Guillem joined I2SysBio as a Ramón y Cajal researcher and leader of his own group, ‘Microbiome Ecology’.

More information: i2sysbio - group     https://i2sysbio.es/groups/30/