Biography 

Dr Jaime Martinez-Urtaza is Distinguished Beatriz-Galindo Senior Professor in the Department of Genetics and Microbiology, UAB. He has previously worked at the University of Santiago de Compostela, the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC), the University of Bath and CEFAS in the UK. He is an honorary professor at the University of Exeter (UK) and a visiting professor at the University of Southampton (UK), the University of the Frontier (Chile) and the Center for Food Research and Development-CIAD (Mexico). He is also a scientific advisor to the National Institutes of Health of Peru and an expert on FAO and WHO for water and foodborne diseases. 

His work covers different aspects of molecular epidemiology and the effects of climate on infectious diseases with a particular interest in the study of water and foodborne diseases. A central theme in his research is the fusion of different scientific disciplines such as molecular biology, microbiology, population genetics, oceanography, climate science and epidemiology, to decipher the occurrence and transmission of infectious diseases. In recent years, he has devoted much of his activity to the application of advanced genomic tools to identify new aspects in the evolution, transmission and dispersal of human pathogens in connection with natural events or activities associated with the activity human.