Dr. Adrian Baez Ortega

Biography

Adrian Baez-Ortega is a computational biologist with a focus on understanding transmissible cancers that emerge, evolve, and spread among groups of animals, particularly marine bivalves. He leads the Bivalve Transmissible Neoplasia Group within the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, where he has secured research funding from the Royal Society and the European Research Council. Adrian earned both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Computer Science from the University of La Laguna in Spain and completed his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis investigated the evolution of transmissible cancer in dogs, earning him notable honors such as the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award and the Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists. In 2020, he joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as a postdoctoral fellow and has contributed significantly to studies on somatic evolution in both human and non-human animal tissues. Concurrently, he was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he holds a position as a Senior Research Fellow. His recent work includes co-directing a genomic study on transmissible cancers in marine cockles, involving researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and has received media coverage from outlets including The New York Post and El País. Additionally, Adrian has designed and delivered scientific programming workshops for early-career researchers and developed statistical models that have been adopted in various fields, contributing to scientific dissemination through general-audience articles and talks over the past decade.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards