Gemma Marfany

She has a PhD in biology and is a lecturer in genetics at the University of Barcelona. Her academic and professional training took place in Barcelona, Edinburgh and Oxford where she studied many areas of genetics, including molecular evolution. At present she heads a research group studying the genetic bases of hereditary human illnesses and, in particular, blindness. She teaches Molecular Biology, Genetic Diagnosis, Genetic Therapy, and Ageing and Genomes in undergraduate and master’s degree courses. Moreover, she is a member of several bioethics and forensic genetics committees. She has more than ninety publications to her name and has supervised nine PhD theses.

She has been a fantasy and science-fiction enthusiast from an early age and believes that scientists must use simple, rigorous language to popularise the science they are so passionate about in order to make it more accessible to society. With this in mind, she has published two books: El efecto CSI. La genética forense del siglo XXI (The CSI Effect: Forensic Genetics in the Twenty-First Century – Edicions UPC, 2010), and Per què envellim? La resposta de la ciència a una vella preocupació humana (Why Do We Age: Science’s Response to an Old Human Problem – Publicacions UB-Omnis Cellula, 2011). Moreover, every Saturday she publishes articles popularising science in the digital publication El Nacional.cat.