José M Mato

General Director

CIC bioGUNE and CIC biomaGUNE

Dr. José M Mato, professor and General Director of the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials, CIC biomaGUNE, studied Chemistry at the University of Madrid. He moved to the Department of Cell Biology and Morphogenesis at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he obtained his PhD degree in 1977. In 1980, Dr. Mato moved to the Department of Metabolism & Nutrition at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation in Madrid as an assistant professor. In 1982, he was a visiting scientist at the NIDCR-NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, and in 1986 a visiting professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1987 he was appointed research professor at the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and five years later the president of the CSIC. In 1997 Dr. Mato was appointed as professor of the Department of Medicine at the University of Navarra and in October 2003 moved to take up his present position as General Director of CIC bioGUNE. Since 2005 Prof. Mato has combined his position at CIC bioGUNE with the position of General Director of CIC biomaGUNE.

Aitziber L. Cortajarena

Scientific Director

CIC biomaGUNE

Dr. Aitziber L. Cortajarena is Ikerbasque Research Professor and Principal Investigator at CIC biomaGUNE since 2016.. During 2021 she was Scientific Vice-Director of CIC biomaGUNE. Dr. Aitziber L. Cortajarena is the Scientific Director of the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials - CIC biomaGUNE since 2022.

Dr. Cortajarena earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Universidad del País Vasco in 2002. Then, she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University (USA) on protein design, structure, and function. In 2006, she was Visiting Scientist at the Weizmann Institute, Israel. Then, continued her work at Yale University, as an Associate Research Scientist. In 2010, she joined IMDEA Nanociencia (Madrid) where she developed her independent research group on bionanotechnology, before moving to CIC biomaGUNE in 2016. In addition to leading several European projects, including an ERC Consolidator Grant and an ERC Proof of Concept, she was awarded by Ikerbasque in 2019 in recognition of her professional career as a researcher and for her scientific contributions.