Cristina Santos

Currently I am associate professor in the Unit of Biological Anthropology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). I received a degree in Biology from the University of Coimbra (Portugal) in 1998, and a PhD in Biology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2005. I completed my post-doctoral training at the University of the Azores in 2007 and I joined to Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as a professor in the same year. I have a broad background on molecular and human population genetics, biostatistics and epidemiology. During the last years, my research have been mainly focused in the evolutionary dynamics of mtDNA (studding somatic and germinal heteroplasmy, recombination of human mtDNA, and also nuclear insertions of mtDNA origin) and in the influence of mtDNA mutations in aging and disease, namely in cancer and late onset neurodegenerative disease. Moreover, I am also interested in the genetic characterization of human ancient and current populations aiming to infer which historical, demographic and microevolutionary factors have shaped human population structure and diversity. In the near future, I would like to analyse in depth the impact of somatic mutations in both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. Since July 2014, I’m the coordinator of the interuniversity Biological Anthropology master (UAB/UB- Universitat de Barcelona). In collaboration with other GREAB members, I supervised two PhD theses already finished and, at this moment, I supervise three ongoing PhD theses and six master researches.