Michael Hackenberg

Michael Hackenberg is an Associate Professor at the Genetics Department of the University of Granada (Spain) were he also obtained his PhD in 2005 working on human retrotransposons under the supervision of Prof. José Oliver. For his PhD thesis he obtained the Excellence Award from the University of Granada in 2010. After post-doctoral stays at the Chair of Genome Oriented Bioinformatics of the Technical University of Munich (2006/2007) and at the Research Centre CIC bioGune (Derio, Spain; 2007-2009) he went back to the University of Granada in 2009 after obtaining a Juan de la Cierva grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. In 2011 he was appointed an Assistant Professor position and since January 2018 he is an Associate Professor.

He is carrying out a highly interdisciplinary research collaborating with Physicist, Mathematicians, Biochemists, Biologists and Medical Doctors. He published 65 research articles in JCR listed journals that received 1987 citations in WoS (h-index 23) and 3168 in Google Scholar (h-index 29). The highly interdisciplinary character can also be seen by the fact that the journals are listed in 16 different WoS categories going from ‘Plant Science’ or ‘Virology’ to ‘Mathematical & Computational Biology’ and ‘Physics, Mathematical’ (10 publications). His research is carried out in a strong international context collaborating with groups from The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Croatia, Sweden, United States, Israel and Australia leading to publications in high impact journals like Cell Reports, PNAS, NAR, Trends in Parasitology, Molecular & Cellular Proteomics or Plant Biotechnology Journal. For one of these works he received the award ‘Universidad de Granada – Caja Rural de Granada a trabajos de investigación de excelencia’. Finally, the collaborations lead also to technology transfer activities and joint research projects. He filed two patents with researchers from the VUmc in Amsterdam and the Biology Centre CAS in Budweis, respectively and in 2015 he founded together with Dutch researchers a spin-off company (exBiome). He is currently the Principle Investigator of a research project granted by the Spanish Government and the lead scientist of two work packages of projects funded by the European Union and the Dutch Cancer Society, respectively. The participation in the ELBA project (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network) where he is in lead of the Computational node composed of researchers from Plovdiv (Bulgaria) and Granada allowed him to incorporate ESRs (Early Stage Researchers) from Greece and Belgium extending therefore the international profile of the Evolutionary Genomics and Bioinformatics Group.

He is teaching both, genetics (classical and Molecular Genetics in the Biology Degree) and subjects related to bioinformatics both at degree (Biochemistry Degree) and master level (Genetics and Evolution, and Biotechnology Master Programs). Apart from two successfully defended doctorates in 2014 and 2019, he is currently supervising 5 PhD students at the University of Granada and he serves as co-promoter of two PhD thesis, one in The Netherlands and one in Croatia. Finally, as an expert in data analysis of High-throughput Sequencing experiments, he was invited as a speaker to different conferences, seminaries and workshops including EU funded COST Actions held in Plovdiv (Bulgaria) and Bari (Italy).

TFMs dirigidos en los últimos 5 años:

 

  1. Título del TFM: Aprendizaje automático en identificación de microRNAs.
    • Nombre del estudiante del Máster: Irene FF
    • Curso académico: 2019/20
  1. Título del TFM: Evaluación de miRNAs y sus variantes como biomarcadores en cáncer de mama y colorrectal.
    • Nombre del estudiante del Máster: María RE
    • Curso académico: 2018/19
  1. Título del TFM: El potencial de RNAs pequeños como biomarcadores.
    • Nombre del estudiante del Máster: EVA A.A.
    • Curso académico: 2015/16

Tesis dirigidas en los últimos 5 años:

  1. Título de la Tesis: Metilación diferencial en el genoma humano y su asociación con la transcripción.
    • Nombre del estudiante de doctorado: Ricardo Lebrón Aguilar
    • Curso académico: 2018/19