José María Carazo
Centro Nacional de Biotecnología. CNB-CSIC
Position title: Full Professor
Education/Training: University of Granada, Spain. Ms.C, 1981, Physics.
University Autonoma, Madrid, Spain. Ph.D, 1984, Structural Biology.
Positions and Employment:
1981-1984: Pre-doctoral fellow, IBM Scientific Center, Madrid, Spain
1985-1986: Post-doctoral Fellow, Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Madrid, Spain
1987-1988: Research Affiliate II, New York State Department of Health
1989- : Head of the Biocomputing Unit, National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain
1990-2000: Tenure Scientist, National, Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain
2001-2002: Senior Research Scientist, National Center of Biotechnology-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
1998-2001: Deputy Director for Research, National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain
2002-2003: Deputy Director for Research Planning and Monitoring, Science and Technology Ministry (on leave from CSIC)
1995-2003: Adj. Professor of Computer Science, Autonoma University, Madrid, Spain
2003-2004: Senior Research Scientist National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain
2005 - : Full Professor, National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain
Other Experience and Professional Memberships:
1997-2001: President of the Spanish Microscopy Society.
2005- : Senior member of the IEEE Computer Society
2003-2014: Principal Founder of the spin-off Integromics, developing software in the Bioinformatics area and adquired by Perkin Elmer on July 2014
2014- : Structural Biology Grid (SBGrid), Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
2015–2020: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Member of the Science Advisory Committee (SAC)
2015- : Australian Centre of Excellence for Advanced Molecular Imaging, Member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC)
2016- : National Center for Protein Science (CAS), Shanghai, Member of the Top User Program
Honors:
1984: PhD Excellence Award by the Spanish Academy of Science.
1986: Okazato Research Award, by JEOL.
1998: Rhone-Poulenc Excellence Award by the French Academy of Science
2008: Frost & Sullivan Most Innovative European Bioinformatics Company of the year to our spin-off company Integromics
2016: Member of Faculty of 1000
Personal Statement:
Jose-Maria Carazo (JMC) works in the area of Structural Bioinformatics and Structural Biology, with a total production of 283 journal papers with 8012 References (Source: ISI Web of knowledge Septemberl, 2019). As a mentor, he was trained close to 30 PhD graduate students and 50 postdoctoral fellows, and, in general, it has participated or coordinated EU, National, Regional and NIH grants. Currently it holds an ERC Synergy grant.
Traditionally, the laboratory effort in Structural Bioinformatics and Structural Biology was distributed more or less 50/50, but in the last years there has been an important shift towards cryo Electron Microscopy. Indeed, JMC has significantly contributed to the so-called "cryoEM Resolution Revolution", since all the work carried on between 2005 and 2010 in the very successful Maximum Likelihood approach (now commonly known as RELION) was performed in Madrid during the extended postdoc stay of Dr. Sjors Scheres in JMC lab. Also, the roots of the crucial Electron Microscopy data Base (EMDB) resource are partly in the EU project "Bioimage", coordinated by JMC in the late nineties. Many more developments since then haven been achieved, and the image processing software developed at JMC group (XMIPP/Scipion) has been downloaded by about 2157 different users in the last 2 years and controls the on-line image processing workflows at major cryoEM Facilities like eBIC/Diamond and the ESRF. JMC is the Spanish representative in the Research Infrastructure for Structural Biology, Instruct
On the Structural Bioinformatics front, and as part of ELIXIR-ES, it is to be noted that one of the lab developments, 3DBionotes, is attached to all cryoEM entries in EMDB in Europe and the USA and, furthermore, it has been recently selected as one of the very few ELIXIR Recommended Interoperabiity Resources.
At the advisory level, he is part of the SAC’s of the ESRF (end of 2020), of the Australian Center of Excellence for Advanced Molecular Imaging (end of 2020), of the Chemistry Department of University of Florencia as part of its Department of Excellence Project (starting), and of the Spanish “Ciber” on Cardiovascular diseases. Finally, he is also part of the Top Users program of the Chinese Academy of Science at the Center for Protein Science of Shanghai.
At the tech transfer level, his laboratory launched the spin-off Integromics in the area of genomics, which is a fully-owned Perkin Elmer Company since 2014. Previously (2007) it was considered the most innovative Spanish start up by La Caixa (one of the main banks) and the most innovative European Bioinformatics company of the year by Frost&Sullivan in 2008.
