Belen Ramos Josemaria

Belén Ramos graduated in Veterinary Medicine in 1998 from the University of Extremadura. She obtained a diploma in Advanced Studies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2001 and her PhD in Physiology in 2002 from the University of Extremadura.

Between 2000 and 2003 he stayed at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where she investigated mechanisms of programmed cell death, a process related to development.

Between 2003 and 2007 she did a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston as a Postdoctoral Fellow Fulbright where he studied transcriptional mechanisms involved in neurodevelopment.

Between 2007 and 2016 as Postdoctoral Fellow Marie Curie and Doctor contract at the Fundació Sant Joan de Deu / CIBERSAM, she began to investigate altered neuronal and glial mechanisms in brains with serious mental disorders associated with development processes and volumetric changes in the brain. She coordinated the molecular psychiatry laboratory since 2007 and is a researcher Miguel Servet of the Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu since 2017.

Since 2016 she is an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona since 2016 and at Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya since 2018.

Currently, she coordinates the line of research in Molecular Psychiatry where she studies altered molecular mechanisms in the brain (neurons and astrocytes) and in blood in schizophrenia that can lead to alterations in the development or functioning of synaptic transmission, with special interest in transcription factors. The final objective is to find biomarkers (molecular, genetic and subcellular) in initial stages that are associated with cognitive functioning, severity of symptoms and changes in the brain that help to predict the evolution of the disease.