Dr. Enrique Carrillo de Santa Pau is Head of the Computational Biology Group at IMDEA Nutrition Institute and Associate Lecture in the Department of Biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Since 2021, he has served on the Board of Directors of the Spanish Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SEBiBC). He is also a co-founder of Microsei Biotech SL, a spin-off of IMDEA Nutrition, created to transform microbiome research into innovative health solutions.
Dr. Carrillo’s academic background reflects a solid multidisciplinary foundation in life sciences, computational biology, and data analysis. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology (2007) and Bachelor’s Degree in Biology (2002) from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He later specialized in computational and quantitative disciplines, completing a Master’s in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (2010) and a Master’s in Applied Statistics (2014). In 2017, he earned a diploma in Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship from IE Business School, strengthening his capacity to lead translational research and innovation initiatives.
Throughout his career, he has held positions at top research institutions, including the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), the Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Sciences (Radboud University, Netherlands), and the Madrid Health Service. These experiences have shaped his expertise in genomics, epigenomics, clinical epidemiology, and computational biology, working alongside internationally renowned scientists such as Alfonso Valencia, Francisco X. Real, Henk Stunnenberg and Miguel Ángel Salinero.
Over the years, Dr. Carrillo has participated in numerous competitive research projects funded under FP7 and H2020, including BLUEPRINT (€30M), CANCERDIP (€3.9M), CANCERALIA (€4.1M), ONCONET SUDOE (€2.3M), and the European project FNS-Cloud (€10M), where he served as Principal Investigator at IMDEA Nutrition. He currently leads several major initiatives, including CD3DTech-CM, a high-throughput screening platform for precision nutrition in non-responsive celiac disease, using 3D organ models and systems biology, AI4Food-CM, focused on artificial intelligence for personalized nutrition, and being scientific coordinator in NUTRIclock (MSCA 2022), a microbiome-based framework for healthy aging. He has also contributed as a team member to other impactful projects such as Gut-Finder (Fundación Ramón Areces), IDEAS222846DIAZ (AECC), and other nutritional intervention studies funded by national agencies. Additionally, he has organized and co-organized R&D activities and scientific events with institutions such as Fundación Instituto Roche, IBM, Perkin Elmer Informatics, EIT Food, and COST Actions, reflecting his active role in knowledge transfer and science communication.
Dr. Carrillo has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Communications, Genome Biology, and NAR accumulating more than 6,500 citations and an h-index of 39 as of April 2025 (google scholar data). He actively contributes to international networks like, COST Actions, ELIXIR Food & Nutrition community and EIT Food, and supervises a growing team of postdoctoral and predoctoral researchers at IMDEA Nutrition.