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Alvaro Glavic

Alvaro Glavic is a Biochemist and PhD in Molecular, Cellular Biology and Neuroscience (University of Chile), with 20 years experience in developmental biology and genetics using Xenopus, Zebrafish and Drosophila. Alvaro did his undergraduate thesis in Biochemist in 1997 with Dr. Roberto Mayor at University of Chile studying the role of Iroquois genes in the formation of Xenopus nervous system. This work was published in EMBO J and awarded by the Chilean Society for Cellular Biology as the best undergraduate or master thesis in 1998. He obtained a CONICYT and the Fundación Andes scholarships to course his PhD in Molecular, Cellular Biology and Neuroscience. In 1998 he received the Hermann Niemeyer Medal to the best PhD student awarded by the Chilean Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2000 he was visiting investigator at Sir John Gurdon´s lab at the Wellcome Trust Institute, UK. In 2002 he finished his doctoral thesis where he further explored the role of Iroquois complex in vertebrate development.

In 2002 he obtained an EMBO long-term fellow to be trained in Drosophila genetics with Antonio Garcia-Bellido at Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa in Spain. After this period, he got a FONDECYT grant to finance a second postdoc and in 2005 he joined Faculty of Sciences (U de Chile) as Assistant Professor. His work was recognized in 2007 by the Academia de Ciencias de Chile and was invited to be part of the program “Cientificos de Frontera”. His curiosity and line of research on tRNA modification and its role in multicellular organisms has attracted several talented students, which have received twice the Federico Leighton award for the best undergraduate and graduate theses in 2013 and 2015. Since 2014 Alvaro is Associate Professor at Faculty of Sciences and from 2016 he is director of a ANILLO grant to investigate the transcriptional, epigenetic, morphological and behavioral effects of developmental undernourishment in Drosophila.