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).
Selected publications
- Correira et al,. 2025, 'myAURA: a personalized health library for epilepsy management via knowledge graph sparsification and visualization', Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, ocaf012.
- Valencia A 2025, 'Decentralized databases in biomedical research: lessons from recent events The recent shutdown of critical health databases by the US CDC is a wake-up call for the research community about the vulnerability of centralised databases', Embo reports.
- Urda-Garcíaa ... Valencia A 2025, 'Patient stratification reveals the molecular basis of disease co-occurrences', Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america, 122 - 35 - e2421060122.
- Benedicto ... Valencia A 2025, 'Constraint based modeling of drug induced metabolic changes in a cancer cell line', Npj systems biology and applications, 11 - 1 - 111.
- Sánchez-Ortí et al., 2025, 'Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Drug Use and Cancer Risk: Protocol for an Overview of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses', JMIR Publications, 14 - e78596.
Selected research activities
ERC SyG Grants Vice-panel Chair.
"Imparable Sanitario" award, Italfarmaco.
CMB Severo Ochoa, Nov.2025
Seminar Norwegian Radium Hospital, October'25
Iberian Evolutionary Medical Genomics, CRG, Oct'25
European Virtual Human Twins Initiative Discussion Panel, Oct'25
Conference ASEICA, October'25.
NNF Data Science Commitee, Sept. 2025
Symposium on "Applied Deep Learning in Bioinformatics", August 2025
Symposium University of Copenhagen, August'25.
Symposium Evolutionary Intelligence, MNCN, August'25
CBeRa kick-off meeting, July'25
Curso de Verano Cátedra USC-Plexus de IA y Medicina Personalizada, July'25
Toulouse OncoWeek, Feb.'25
Jornada Hospitales UAB, Jan'25.
Symposium ARECES, Feb.'25
Workshop CNB-CSIC, Feb'25