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Our Team

Josefa González

Josefa González

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

CSIC Research Scientist

I did a PhD in Biology in Prof. Alfredo Ruiz lab at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). After a first postdoctoral stay at UAB, I moved to Stanford University to work with Prof. Dmitri Petrov. While at Stanford, I was a Fulbright Postdoctoral fellow (2006-2008), and a Research Associate (2008-2011) at the Department of Biology. In 2011,  I joined the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) in Barcelona as a Ramon y Cajal fellow. In March 2017, I got a permanent position at CSIC as a Tenured Scientist, and in May 2023 I was promoted to Research Scientist.

Research in my lab focuses on understanding how organisms adapt to natural and urban environments. We combine multiomics approaches with molecular and phenotypic analyses to identify and characterize adaptive mutations, in particular those induced by transposable element insertions. Research in my lab has been funded by a MSCA Career Integration Grant, an ERC Consolidator Grant, and several grants from the Spanish Government.

I am the co-founder and coordinator of the European Drosophila Population Genomics Consortium, which brings together over 70 labs from 28 countries, I am co-leading the CSIC network Conexión GENOMA  and I am a member of TE Hub. I have been the ESEB Vice President (2023-2025),  ESEB DEI officer (2023-2025), ESEB council member (2017-2023) and an SMBE council member (2021-2023) and SMBE IDEA task force member (2022-2023). I am an EMBO member since 2026.

I am co-leading a citizen science project, Melanogaster: Catch The Fly!, that involves high-school students and teachers in monitoring the impact of climate change in natural populations of Drosophila.

 

Dean McKeown

Dean McKeown

POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER

July 2025- present

In 2019 I completed my PhD in Marine Virology at the Marine Biological Association of the UK (MBA) in the lab of Dr. Declan Schroeder. My first postdoc was in the Station Biologique de Roscoff, in the Algal Genetics Group led by Dr. Mark Cock, where I annotated…

Gonzalo Sabarís

Gonzalo Sabarís

POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER

November 2024 – present

I am broadly interested in how molecular mechanisms drive evolutionary change, with a particular focus on the genetic and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. My research investigates the regulatory roles of non-coding DNA, chromatin architecture, and…

Francesca Destefanis

Francesca Destefanis

POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER

June 2023- present

After obtaining my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Torino, I carried out a PhD in Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Trento, studying…

Gabriel Martínez

Gabriel Martínez

PhD STUDENT

June 2025- present

During my bachelor’s, I was attracted to transposable elements > sequences that jump across the genome driven by nothing but their own replication, much like the first replicators and decided to dive deeper by carrying out my internship studying the effect of

Edith Tittarelli

Edith Tittarelli

VISITING PHD STUDENT

January 2026- present

I am a PhD student at the Polytechnic University of Marche (Italy). My research focuses on the study of transposable elements in transcriptomic data of aquatic species. As a visiting PhD student in the González Lab, I will…