Agustín Ruiz

Dr. Agustin Ruiz Laza is currently the Director of Research of Fundació ACE. Barcelona Alzheimer Treatment & Research Center (Barcelona, Spain). Born in Utrera, Sevilla, Spain (August 10th, 1969). He graduated in Medicine and Surgery and has a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Seville. For eight year he conducted research work at the Department of Medical Genetics and Prenatal Diagnosis in the Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío, Sevilla (1993-2001 ). There he received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award at the University of Seville (2000 ) for his thesis. He then co-promoted and co-founded four biotech companies receiving awards for best 50K Business Idea and Best Business Plan in the field of Biotechnology, Instituto Internacional San Telmo. The result of this activity with their partners received the award for business excellence in the area of Innovation of the Government of Andalusia (2008).
Agustin Ruiz has published 144 articles in indexed journals such as JAMA, Lancet Neurol., J. Exp. Med., Nature, Nature series, among others. He is co- author of several patents related to the molecular diagnosis of complex diseases and bioinformatics tools for genomic research. He has received funding for >35 projects granted by regional, national and European competitive agencies. He participated in the writing of several chapters of scientific books and reviews in national magazines.
His scientific interest is focused on the application of genomic technologies in medicine. He has participated in the identification of numerous genetic factors linked to different diseases and in the identification of 14 genes associated with Alzheimer's disease. Ruiz is the co-founder of the Dementia Genetics Spanish Consortium (DEGESCO). Currently, he is coordinating the EU Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) ADAPTED project (www.imi-adapted.eu) and the GR@ACE project conducting GWAS using samples from 14000 Spanish individuals.