Xesús M. Abalo
Presidente
Miembro de pleno derecho
Scientific Background: To study living beings was my fantasy as a child and to pursue a career as a Scientist was my dream. Luckily, I became MSc in Molecular Biology at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Galiza – Spain) in 2006, fulfilling part of my ambitions. My doctorate involved comparative analyses of the Evolution of the Central Nervous System, with a special focus on lampreys, a key player to study Evolution of vertebrates. In 2007 I moved to Sweden and kept working with lampreys until I got an offer to move to Uppsala University to continue my studies on Evolution but from a new perspective: the visual system. I changed the animal model to zebrafish and got the possibility to supervise students and to get my own funding, which enabled me to jump again in 2017 to use human adipose cells as experimental model and diabetes as the field of study. Currently, I perform goal-directed-mutagenesis in fat cells from human donors looking for potential drug targets.
Goals within ACES: Having Science as the common nexus between Spain and Sweden, ACES-SFFS is the key tool in order to interconnect both communities. I want to contribute to our association by helping in the organisation of regular meetings, which facilitates the interaction between Spanish Scientist working in Sweden and enhances the chances of finding new opportunities.