Urko M. Marigorta is a Ikerbasque Research Fellow and La Caixa Incoming Junior Leader working as the Principal Investigator in the Integrative Genomics Lab from CIC bioGUNE since October 2018. His research interest lies in devising new methods for assessment of genetic risk of disease, and gearing genetic knowledge towards implementation of precision medicine based solutions in the clinical practice. He has expertise in several disciplines related to disease genomics, including bioinformatics, genetic epidemiology, statistical genomics, and evolutionary and quantitative genetics.

Dr. Marigorta carried out his PhD at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in the PRBB in Barcelona. Under the supervision of Prof. Arcadi Navarro, his thesis focused on comparing the genetic architecture of complex disease across human populations. His work supported the infinitesimal model of genetic risk to a greater extent than previously appreciated and confirmed that prediction of genetic risk should be transportable across ethnicities (Marigorta et al., PLoS Genetics, 2013). In 2013 he moved to the United States to carry out a postdoc at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Under the mentorship of Prof. Greg Gibson, during the last five years Dr. Marigorta enhanced his knowledge bases in functional and integrative genomics, making important conceptual and analytical contributions. The two highlights of his postdoc are the work as main RNA-Seq analyst in the RISK team that build a new model to predict risk of complications in pediatric Crohn’s disease (Kugathasan et al., The Lancet, 2017) and devising the transcriptional risk scores to predict risk of disease (Marigorta et al., Nature Genetics, 2017).