The Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona appoints Arcadi Navarro as a permanent member

The Director of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), Dr. Arcadi Navarro, has been appointed permanent member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB). At the admission session, held at the institution's headquarters, Dr. Navarro presented the report "Big data in biology: genomics, health and evolution". In his speech, in which he placed special emphasis on the work he has developed in recent years at the head of the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) of the Center for Genetic Regulation, he addressed the impact of medical genomics and the science of data in biology, especially focusing on concepts such as "Big Data" and "Open Science", and has highlighted the importance of sharing data within the global scientific community to promote collaboration and accelerate innovation. “Currently there is no scientific progress without data sharing. Therefore, and in a very rigorous sense, the human future will be shared or it won’t be”, stated Dr. Navarro.

The event was attended by the president of the Pasqual Maragall foundation, Cristina Maragall, the rector of the Pompeu Fabra University, Laia de Navidad, the former councilors Andreu Mas-Colell and Josep Maria Argimon, currently Director of the Scientific Infrastructure of the BBRC and the associate director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Josep Maria Martorell.

Dr. Navarro, who has received medal number 35, is the first expert in data sciences to enter the Biology section as a permanent member. This appointment undoubtedly represents recognition of his scientific merits as a geneticist. In addition to being the current director of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and the Barcelona Beta Brain Research Center, Arcadi Navarro is an ICREA professor and researcher in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University and director of the Evolutionary Genomics laboratory at the Institut of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) and the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) at the Center for Genomic Regulation. His research activity has focused mainly on the field of population genetics research, molecular evolution, relationships between genomes and phenomena, and evolutionary medicine.