JIMÉNEZ ALTAYÓ, Francesc

Academic training

Doctor in Neurosciences, UNIVERSITAT AUTÒNOMA DE BARCELONA
Graduated in Biology, UNIVERSITAT AUTÒNOMA DE BARCELONA

Professional experience

Francesc Jiménez Altayó had his first contact with science in 2000 when he was still in the last year of his bachelor’s degree at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), because he won a collaboration grant (Ministry of Education, Spain) in the Department of Pharmacology (UAB). In 2002, he started his PhD with a 4-year competitive scholarship from the Generalitat of Catalonia (Spain). Within this period, Francesc won a prize as a young researcher at the "8th International Symposium on Resistance Arteries" held in Angers (France) in 2004. After obtaining his PhD degree (Excellent cum laude), his doctoral thesis got the extraordinary prize (course 2006/07) from the Department of Pharmacology (UAB). During the PhD period, he published five papers (3 as first author; all in quartile 1) in international journals in the field of Pharmacology/Physiology. Afterwards, he got a temporal associate professor contract that led to the publication of two more articles (one as first author; all in quartile 1); one of these works was awarded with the "Research Prize for Young Pharmacologists Josep Antoni Salvà of Research in Basic Pharmacology 2011" of the Catalan Society of Pharmacology. Meanwhile, he won a competitive postdoctoral fellowship from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) for a stay at the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Bath (1.2 years) and later at the University of Oxford (1 year). During his postdoctoral stay, he published three works (1 as first author; 2/3 quartile 1) in international journals in the field of Pharmacology. In 2009, Francesc gained a Juan de la Cierva contract from the Ministry of Science (Spain) to work at the Department of Pharmacology of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and, at the same time, a one-year postdoctoral researcher contract at the Department of Pharmacology (UAB). The possibility to initiate a tenure-track career was decisive to choose the latter option. After participating in an open competition exam, he obtained a post of Tenure- track professor (Profesor lector) at the same department. In 2013, Francesc enjoyed a mobility stay program (Ministry of Education, Spain) at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), which allowed him to be awarded Honorable Mention at the Congress of the Federation of Societies of Experimental Biology in Brazil 2014. In 2015, he obtained a post of “Profesor agregado interino” at the Department of Pharmacology (UAB) and, after participating in an open competition exam in 2020, he gained a post of “Profesor agregado” until now. Francesc coordinates two subjects in the Biology, Biotechnology, Microbiology, and Biomedical Sciences Degrees at UAB, and he is the coordinator of the Master of Pharmacology at UAB, in which he also coordinates a module and a subject. Currently, he has published 53 publications (14 as first author; 18 as author for correspondence; 9 as last author; 42 in quartile 1 and 13 in decile 1) in international journals and has edited an electronic book. The medium/long-term objectives of his research are based on the knowledge of the mechanisms involved in brain and perivascular damage during high-prevalence diseases such as cerebral ischaemia, as well as rare diseases such as Marfan and Williams-Beuren syndromes. Notably, Francesc has extensive experience in the field of cerebral ischemia and the model of transient middle cerebral artery occlusion, in which he has worked for almost 20 years.