Jaime Martínez-Urtaza takes part in the Lancet report on climate change and health
Department of Genetics and Microbiology researcher, who recently joined under a Beatriz Galindo contract, is one of the 120 worldwide experts to wrok on the 2020 Lancet Countdown Report.
03/12/2020
Molecular epidemiologist specialising in genomics Jaime Martínez-Urtaza is researcher at the UAB Department of Genetics and Microbiology, and one of the 120 global experts who is involved in the initiative entitled The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, an annual report on the effects of climate change on health published by the prestigious journal Lancet. The UAB and the University of Santiago de Compostela, with the involvement of Joaquín Trinañes, are the only institutions in Spain to form part of this study, alongside 36 other academic institutions and UN agencies.
The report, which was presented on Thursday 3 December online, included the participation of specialists from different areas, who evaluated the effects of climate change on health according to 43 indicators, including nutritional, demographic and infectious diseases.
Professor Jaime Martinez-Urtaza has previously worked at the University of Santiago de Compostela, at the European Centre for Disease Control in Sweden, and as lecturer at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath, UK, and at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), also in the UK. He is honoraryprofessor at the University of Exeter and visiting professor at the University of Southampton, the University of Frontera, Chile, and the Research Centre in Food and Development-CIAD in Mexico. He is also a scientific consultant to the National Health Institute of Peru and FAO and WHO expert in water- and food-borne diseases.
His work covers different aspects of molecular epidemiology and the effects of the climate on infectious diseases, with a particular interest in the study of water- and food-borne diseases. A central topic of his research is the fusion of different scientific disciplines such as molecular biology, microbiology, populations genetics, oceanography, climate science and epidemiology, in order to descipher the appearance and transmission of infectious diseases. During the past years he has dedicated a large part of his research to the application of advanced genomic tools to identigy new aspects in the evolution, transmission and dispersion of human pathogens in connection with natural events and hnuman-associated activities .
Beatriz Galindo Senior Researcher at the UAB
Since this past April, Professor Jaime Martinez-Urtaza is distinguished senior researcher Beatriz Galindo at the Unit of Genetics of the UAB Department of Genetics and Microbiology. This is a new type of contract created to attract scientists with an extensive teaching and research trajectory working in international scientific institutions with the aim of having them apply their research expertise in Spain. His line of research at the UAB focuses on genomics and the evolution of human pathogens, the study of how the climate change effects the dynamics of epidemics associated with the diseases caused by these pathogens.
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