I am a medical doctor specialized in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. I obtained the PhD degree in 2008 and several Spanish competitive contracts: Río Hortega (2008), Miguel Servet I (2013), and Miguel Servet II (2018). I am ICREA Research Professor since December 2024. In 2016 I won the prestigious Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award from Health Effects Institute, USA. I am the Director of the INMA Project, a unique multi-site birth cohort in Spain. I established myself as an international researcher (i.e., Adjunct Professor at Erasmus MC University Medical Centre; visiting scientist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health) and an internationally and nationally recognized expert (e.g., Scientific Advisory Board member of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig; Associate Editor of European Journal of Epidemiology; member of several Spanish scientific and advisory committees; consolidated research group by Catalan Government).
Research interests
I am carrying out pioneering research in the field of environmental epidemiology and child health, in particular brain development. My major innovative contribution has been the findings on how air pollution impairs cognitive and motor function, mental health, brain morphology and connectivity, as well as the extension of this research to other environmental exposures. Another unique signature has been the application of a novel assessment of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in children and the study of its relationship with neurodevelopment and sleep. My group also applies state-of-the-art statistical methods to understand the potential causal neuropsychological effects of different environmental exposures. This is particularly important for exposome research, where multiple exposures are assessed simultaneously and causal reasoning is usually not taken into account. I have also substantial expertise on cohort studies.
Selected research activities
I am coordinating a Horizon Europe project including 25 partners from Europe, the US, and Asia. I am supervising 6 PhD students, 3 postdoctoral fellows, 3 master students, and 2 postgraduate students. I received the Best Communication Award at the I Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Consortium of Biomedical Research. I was invited to give a keynote at the Donostia Sustainability Forum.