Team

Marco Mariotti / Principal Investigator

Marco Mariotti graduated in Biotechnologies (BSc) and Bioinformatics (MSc) in his hometown Bologna, Italy. He then obtained a PhD in Biomedicine at the Centre de Regulació Genòmica / Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, supervised by Roderic Guigó. He later worked as postdoc at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School (USA), after a brief stint at University College Cork (Ireland).

In May 2021, he joined the Universitat de Barcelona as Ramón y Cajal Fellow / Group Leader.

A more extensive CV is available here.

Nadezhda (Nadya) Makarova / PhD student

I am PhD student from Russia. I am interested in post transcriptional regulation of protein biosynthesis with all its diversity across species. My project is devoted to the investigation of possible mechanisms of read through in insects, where the translation after annotated stop codon is observed for much higher number of genes than in mammals. I am excited about NGS, data analysis and designing figures in R. I was working as a technician at NGS facility and now want to improve my expertise in the research projects. I adore to organize and coordinate things, starting from research projects and finishing with travelling and parties. Active interaction with people, discussion and communication during the project - that is the most inspiring for me in science. But also I love small trips, not too extreme hiking, sport activities like yoga or swimming. Sometimes I play the guitar and sing Russian old (from 1960x) songs (it is called singer-songwriter genre).

Daniel Martín de la Fuente / Technician

Daniel is a Senior Laboratory Technician graduated in IES Ezequiel González (Segovia) and
Technician of Pathological Anatomy graduated in EPSUM (Madrid), passionate about research.
He is interested in genomics, genetics and everything related to biochemistry, more specifically
in the enzyme Telomerase. He likes to be organized, responsible and constant in his work, he
has patience and a positive attitude.
He enjoys science and nature. He usually spends his free time in the countryside, with animals.
Currently, his goal is to gain experience in the field of research in order to be able to dedicate
his life to it in the future.

Max Ticó / bioinformatics Technician

Max is a bioinformatician who graduated from ESCI-UPF. He completed a Master's degree in Biomedical Research at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a Master's degree in Data Science at UOC. Max is highly interested in genomics and bioinformatics, but he also enjoys sports such as surfing, hiking, and cycling. He is currently focused on bioinformatics and the evolutionary study of selenoproteins, with the aim of starting the PhD soon

Irene Agudo Zamora / Master student

Irene is a physicist from the University of Barcelona, currently studying the Master's in Modelling for Science and Engineering at UAB. What fascinates her most about physics is how it weaves through every field of science, revealing the hidden connections that shape our world. This curiosity led her to the iGEM UB team in 2024, where she remains an active member in 2025. The iGEM UB 2025 PI is Marco Mariotti, and from that project, Irene's master's thesis was born, focusing on the tertiary structure of RNA and its impact on SCR. She is also passionate about music, reading, and science outreach, having co-presented a children's TV show on SX3, the Catalan children's channel.

Former lab members

Ester Muñoz Del Campo / Master student

Ester is a valencian biotechnologist who came to Barcelona to become a bioinformatician. She is a student of the Master in Bioinformatics for Health Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra as well as a member of the first team of Club Natació Barcelona as a sprint swimmer. She developed an interest in genomics as soon as she heard of it and also has a passion for programming. Ester is now contributing to improve bioinformatic tools with us. Besides coding and swimming she also enjoys cooking.

JOAN PALLARÈS ALBANELL / MASTER STUDENT

Joan is a Biomedical Researcher mainly interested in gene expression regulation. Currently, he is doing the Master in Bioinformatics for Health Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra / Universitat de Barcelona. Despite starting his career as an experimentalist, he has always been interested in the computational analysis of biological data, and now is devoted to increase his coding literacy. Besides learning to code, he enjoys reading, loud music and CrossFit.

Sergio Sánchez Moragues / Technician

Sergio first arrived to the team as a student of the Master in Genetics and Genomics at the Universitat de Barcelona, and he is now hired as technician. Biochemist by training, geneticist at heart, Sergio is taking a dive into the deep sea of bioinformatics in search of missing selenoproteins.

Rosina Comas Ghierra / visiting master student

Rosina is a Clinical Biochemist graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry, University of the Republic (UDELAR), Uruguay. She has academic and professional training in the area of health, teaching and research, and has experience in analytical biochemistry, parasitological and genetic analyses. Currently, she works as a teacher in the Parasitology Unit of the Faculty of Chemistry, UDELAR, and is doing her postgraduate studies in Bioinformatics at the Worm Biology Laboratory of the Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, supervised by Gustavo Salinas. Her thesis addresses, from an informational perspective, the energy metabolism of parasitic helminths, the networks used by these organisms to maintain redox balance, and use the resources acquired form the host, which have been evolutionarily optimized for the normoxia-hypoxia transition associated with their lifecycles.

Rosina joins our group for a two months project for training in comparative evolutionary genomics with the main objective of studying the biosynthesis, incorporation and use of selenocysteine in helminths.

Emerson Sullivan / Visiting Undergraduate Student

Emerson is a fourth year undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland USA. He is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Biology, with additional minors in Computational Medicine and Applied Math & Statistics. Emerson is also a member and two year captain of the Johns Hopkins varsity water polo team and some of his additional hobbies include surfing, climbing, spending times outdoors, and eating delicious food.

Emerson joined our group for a summer project co-supervised by Roderic Guigó (CRG), focused on assessing the status of selenoprotein gene annotation in Ensembl.

Join us!

Interested in joining the lab? Contact us!
There are opportunities for researchers at all levels (undergrad students, master students, postdocs).