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Xavier Rodó

Xavier Rodó

Institut de Salut Global Barcelona

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Head of the CLIMA (Climate & Health Program at ISGlobal, ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4843-6180). Founding director of the IC3 climate institute and former head of the LRC-PCB. MSc in engineering, completed his PhD in 1997 (UB) on the simulation of extreme ecosystems under climate forcing. Visiting fellow at Princeton and UCSD, and COLA-IGES associated scientist. Background in numerical ecology, climate dynamics and climate impact modeling. Taught ecology, advanced statistics, climate dynamics and sustainability and led/participated in >50 research projects. Over 20 postdoct fellows. Co-chair of CLIVAR-Spain (-2007), SSC of the MEDCLIVAR-ESF, CA and ER of the AR4-WGII and ER of AR6 (IPCC2007, 2021). SCM of the DIG of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and of the ISIMIP Health Impact Models for IPCC AR6. EBM: PLoS NTD, Sci. Rep. and of the OPCC to monitor climate change in the Pyrenees. TT of the WMO climate & COVID-19. EG Health UfM.


Research interests

The interplay between climate and health, where I attempt to uncover how climate impacts a wide range of diseases. I also work on climate dynamics, particularly the origin and predictability of El Niño and towards improving translational climate services for health, in particular for extremes. I am interested in the development of new statistical techniques and on improving computational models with different levels of complexity. The former to disentangle the interplay between intrinsic (e.g. immunity, demography, malnutrition) and extrinsic factors (e.g. climate, environment). For instance, the modeling of climate-driven infectious diseases (from waterborne, to foodborne, vectorborne and airborne diseases such as COVID-19 and flu). An emerging area of my research entails understanding the interaction between climate, pollution and the aerial microbiome for their effects on human health.

Selected publications

Rodó X, San-José A, Kirchgatter K, López L R 2021, ‘Changing climate and the COVID-19 pandemic: more than just heads or tails‘. Nature Medicine. 27(4):576-579.

Rodó X, Pamela P, Martinez Amir Siraj, Mercedes Pascual, 2021. ‘Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 ‘slowdown’ in global warming‘. Nature Comms. 12:1555.

– Fontal, A., Bouma, M.J., San José, A., Pascual, M., Rodó, X, 2021. ‘Climatic signatures in the different COVID-19 pandemic waves across both hemispheres‘, Nature Computational Science, 1:655-665.

– Martínez-Solanas E, Quijal-Zamorano M, Achebak H, Petrova D, Robine J-M, Herrmann F R, Rodó X, Ballester J 2021, ‘Projections of temperature-attributable mortality in Europe: a time series analysis of 147 contiguous regions in 16 countries‘, The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(7):e446-e454.

– Quijal-Zamorano M, Martínez-Solanas E, Achebak H, Petrova D, Robine J-M, Herrmann FR, Rodó X, Joan Ballester 2021, ‘Seasonality reversal of temperature attributable mortality projections due to previously unobserved extreme heat in Europe‘, The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(9):e573-e575.

– Lopez L R & Rodó X 2021. ‘A modified SEIR model to predict the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain and Italy: simulating control scenarios and multi-scale epidemics‘. Results in Physics, 21:103746.


Selected research activities

Osaka University, Osaka, Japan – Special Appointed Visiting Professor (2021-2023).

Universitat de Vic, Vic, Catalonia, Spain – Associate Professor in Climate Change & Health (2021-2024)

-EBM of PLoS Climate (2021-) and PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. (2019-)

-Appointed TT Member for the World Meteorological Organization (Assessment of the role of Meteorological and Air Quality factors in the COVID-19 pandemic).

Rapporteur for the EU Parliament on the effects of Pollution on the COVID-19 pandemics.

-Co-developer COVID-19 model.

-11 invited lectures in International Symposia, 5 ongoing grants

ICREA Memoir 2021