Valencia Herrera, Alfonso
ICREA Research Professor at Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS).
Life & Medical Sciences
Short biography
Computational biologist, pioneer scientist applying computer science to solve biological problems, recognized as leader in his field. Focused on the analysis of large collections of genomic data, especially protein interaction networks applied to (epi)Genomics, Cancer Biology and Precision Medicine, his group train the application of Natural Language technology to the biomedical domain. He earned a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (UAM) plus a PostDoctoral researcher in Bioinformatics (EMBL Heid). Prof. at ICREA, Scientific Director and Director’s of Life Sciences in BSC-CNS. Head of the Spanish node of the European Infrastructure for Life-Science Information, ELIXIR. Founding member and former President of the ISCB. Elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Executive Editor of "Bioinformatics" OUP, Section Editor of Mol Oncol. Editor FEBS Letters, Prof. Honoris Causa by the Danish Technical University.
Research interests
His research interest is the development of Computational Biology methods and their application to biomedical problems. Some of the computational methods he developed are considered pioneering work in areas such as biological text mining, protein coevolution, disease networks and more recently modelling cellular systems (digital twins). He participates in some of the key cancer related international consortia. In terms of community services, he is one of the initial promoters of what is now the ELIXIR infrastructure, founder of the Spanish Bioinformatics network and founder member and former president of ISCB the professional association of Bioinformaticians and the Executive Editor of the main journal in the field (Bioinformatics OUP).