Jose-Maria Carazo: My personal page

Contact info

Photo: Fuente PC Pymes

Prof. Jose-Maria Carazo

Email: carazo@cnb.csic.es

Biocomputing Unit (BCU), Head
Spanish National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC)
C/ Darwin, 3 (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)
28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid (Spain)

PDF icon Full biographical sketch (PDF format)

I was born in the beautiful town of Granada, Spain, in 1959. It was in this University where I finished my Master in Physics in 1981. I then moved to the IBM Madrid Scientific Center, where I was confronted with the image processing challenges behind the emerging techniques, at the time, of three-dimensional electron microscopy (3D-EM) and the different atomic scanning techniques in whose development IBM was engaged. I defended my PhD in Molecular Biology at the University Autonoma of Madrid (UAM) in 1984.

I left for Albany, New York, in 1986, to join the Wadsworth Center of the NYS Department of Health. My coming back to Madrid happened in 1989, setting up the BioComputing Unit of the newly established National Center for Biotechnology (CNB), nowadays the largest Center of the Spanish High Research Council (CSIC), located in the campus of the UAM.

Currently I keep busy in Madrid, engaged in my activities at the CNB, the UAM, the newly established Scientific Park of Madrid (PCM), and our spin-off company, Integromics.

Research interest

Electron Microscope Originally trained at the University level as a Physicist, and having been exposed for six years in IBM to a broad range of computational aspects, it may appear natural that my introduction to the Biological arena was in the area of Structural Biology. In this way I have always being engaged in both the development of new image processing methods for the experimental determination of large macromolecular complex by three-dimensional electron microscopy (3D-EM), as well as in their practical application to concrete biological problems.

The need to organize the data that were being produced by 3D-EM lead us to another line of activity in the development of new structural data bases as well as in issues of devising more efficient query mechanisms over these complex data bases, while the desire to extract as much information as possible from these databases naturally introduced us into the area of data mining.

Much of the methodological work we have done for structural information can and is actually being applied to other types of data in the areas of genomics and proteomics.

I strongly believe in the new possibilities that await at the borders between disciplines. Indeed, it is with the goal of being at that difficult border that we have created the "Biocomputing cluster", a strong multidisciplinary, inter-institutional, highly cohexionated group of researchers that explore the borders between Biology and Computer Science.

Beyond Spain, and as a consequence of my strong international focus, it came natural the coordination of interdisciplinary European projects in the area of large biological databases of complex objects (the pioneer BioImage project, which provided both the bases for the 3D-EM extension to the MSD project known as EMD, hosted at the EBI, as well as the bases for a general scientific imaging resource that is now flying on its own) as well as the participation in several EU (3 at the moment), NIH (2 currently) and other transnational projects.

Technological transfer is one of the mandates stated in the CNB Mission, and as one of the actions towards its fulfilment we started in 2002 the spin-off company Integromics, that defines itself as "Engineering in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics", and it represents a fine blend of strong engineering and strong biology oriented to the development of new sofware tools for data management and data analysis in genomics and proteomics. We have already achieved worldwide impact and I am proud to serve as its Founder.

Professional appointments

CNB I was a predoc and postdoctoral student from 1981 to 1986 at the IBM Madrid Scientific Center (at the time, one of the twelve Scientific Center of IBM worldwide). From 1986 to 1989 I was a Research Associate at the Wadsworth Center, in Albany, New York. Then, from 1989 on I head the BioComputing Unit of the CNB, serving as Deputy Director for Research of the CNB from 1997 to 2002. Later on, during part of 2002 and the whole of 2003, I was involved in the definition of the strategic Spanish Research Plan 2004-2007 as Deputy Director General for Research Planning of the Science and Technology Ministery (on leave from the CNB-CSIC).

My relation with different Universities in Spain is very close since 1992, when I start co-Directing a newly created Joint Research Unit between the BioComputing Unit and the Department of Computer Architecture of the University of Malaga. I also used to teach, from 1996 to 2002, a semester on Parallel Computer Architecture at the UAM. I now coordinate the biocomputing infrastructural aspects of the PCM, which is a Computational Node of the Spanish Bioinformatics Institute (INB) and a SUN Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics.

I think that professional Societies have a role to play in science, and so I belong to a number of them, such as the IEEE for over twenty years (holding the Senior Member level), the much newer ISCB, the European and Spanish Microscopy Societies (I was President of the latter from 1997 to 2001), the Spanish Biophysical Society, and the Spanish Biochemistry Society.

Acknowledgements

Of course, I cannot but warmly thank the different European, American, National and Regional Agencies as well as the CSIC, that help financing our interdisciplinary laboratory.