Juan Ramón Martínez Morales

Juan Ramón Martínez-Morales (JRMM) studies developmental genetics and tissue morphogenesis, with a particular focus on the early development of the vertebrate eye. Other topics such as the emergence and radiation of the vertebrate body plan and the coupling between mechanical forces and tissue morphogenesis are among the broad interests of his team.
JRMM graduated in Biology at La Laguna University (Tenerife, Spain) and developed his PhD (UAM, Madrid) and early postdoctoral years at the Instituto Cajal-CSIC in Madrid (PI Paola Bovolenta), having a long and very formative postdoctoral period at EMBL-Heidelberg (2002-2007). JRMM is an independent researcher since 2008 at CABD, first as Ramón y Cajal and then as “Científico Titular-CSIC” (2009-2020), and “Investigador Científico-CSIC” (2020-2022).
JRMM scientific production comprises 3 book chapters and 53 articles include 44 articles and 9 reviews, with a total number of citations = 3055; H index= 26 (ResearchGate). Among the publications as main author (33 in total), stand out relevant contributions in relevant Journals such as Nat Genetics (1), Nat Comm (3), Genome Biol (3), Dev Cell (1), Genome Res (1), PNAS (1), eLife (2) or Development (4), many of them with international collaborators. Internationality is also reflected in reviewing activities for relevant journals in his field (e.g. Current Biology, Development, eLife, EMBO Journal, Genome Research, Nat Comm, Review Commons, Science Advances, and Science). In that regard, he is associated editor in Front Cell Dev Biol since 2002. JRMM is frequently engaged in public communication activities, including outreach seminars, radio interviews, and scientific workshops. In addition, he has published 3 outreach articles.
As a group leader, JRMM has been PI in 6 national projects (AEI), 2 regional (JA) projects, 2 private agencies proposals, 2 Maria de Maeztu excellence consortia (AEI) and 2 ITN-EU consortia. He has supervised 6 PhD thesis: Inés Gago Rodrigues (2013), María Nicolás Pérez (2014), Javier Vázquez Marin (2018), Lorena Buono (2020), Ana Sousa-Ortega (2023), José Serrano Morales (2024); and is currently supervising 3:, Jesús Crespo (2022-), Cielo Centola (2023-) and Sofia Manzo (2024-). The group has also trained 9 postdoctoral researchers, 4 of which: Ozren Bogdanovic; Cristina González Aguilera, Joaquín Letelier and María Almuedo, are currently successful group leaders.
In September 2022, JRMM was promoted to tenured "Profesor de Investigación/CSIC”. He has been the Scientific Director of the CABD Aquatic Vertebrates Facility (2016-2022) and is currently member of the steering board of the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology (SEBD; 2023-). He has participated in numerous grant panels (ANII-Uruguay; CONICYT-Chile, Teleton-Italy; ANR-France, ERC(Co)-EU), and was frequent evaluator for the National Evaluation Agency (AEI), being part of the BIO/BMC panel during 2023 and 2024. JRMM is currently the director of the María de Maeztu excellence Unit at the CABD. https://www.cabd.es/es/pages/266/unidad-maria-de-maeztu.html