Dr Marc Güell, co-founder of Integra Therapeutics and principal investigator of the Translational Synthetic Biology Laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), has been made a member of the Young Academy of Spain (AJE) after a selection process with 87 candidates. He will belong to the AJE for five years.

This makes Dr Güell an Academic of the AJE, along with nine other young researchers chosen by an independent international committee of renowned experts in various areas of knowledge: Iria Da Cunha Fanego, María Cuartero Botía, María Escudero Escribano, Irene Valenzuela Agüí, Guiomar Niso Galán, Óscar Lucía Gil, Arnau Busquets García, Juan Antonio Mayoral Díaz-Asensio and Borja Franco Llopis. In addition to academic merit, the committee based their decision on diversity of the candidates and multidisciplinarity of their fields.

“It is truly an honour to become an Academic of the AJE and I hope to help the institution achieve its goals, which are to promote science as a career option, foster scientific skills and act as a benchmark forum for young researchers in Spain,” explains Dr Marc Güell.

PhD in Biomedicine from UPF and degree in Chemical and Telecommunications engineering from IQS, Güell has dedicated a large part of his career to translational science. After doing his doctorate research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), in 2011 he joined the Harvard University Wyss Institute, led by Professor George Church, a pioneer in genome sequencing and gene editing. In 2017, he returned to Barcelona to join the UPF as a tenure-track professor in the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences and to lead the Translational Synthetic Biology Lab. He is the author of articles with more than 11,000 citations and patents that have been the basis of three biotechnology companies (Integra Therapeutics, eGenesis and S-Biomedic).