ICREA Research Professor
Raúl Méndez studied Biology (Biochemistry) in the Autonomous University of Madrid. He obtained his PhD in 1993 for work carried out at the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa under the supervision of César de Haro. He did postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Robert E. Rhoads at the Louisiana State University Medical Center (1994-1997) and then in the laboratory of Joel D. Richter (1997-2001) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. In 2001 he joined the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona as a group leader (Program Ramón y Cajal + I3). In 2010 his group moved to the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), where he is a senior scientist and ICREA research professor. He was head of the PhD. Program and member IRB Internal Scientific Committee from 2012 till 2018 and is currently IRB Vice-Director (2018-present). Since the time of his PhD work, his research has focused on how mRNAs are translated into proteins and how this process is regulated during cell division and differentiation. Current interests include how defects in these gene expression programs contribute to cancer progression and aging.