A personal touch of Georgina Flórez Grau

My name is Georgina Flórez Grau, Spanish and I am a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Tumor Immunology, theme Cancer development and immune defense.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up? Can you tell us something about your child years. 

I used to dream about studying veterinary as I was spending a lot of time in the nature in contact with animals. Then I changed my mind because I was curious about how all the mechanisms of live being works.

What was your previous academic training, where did you study and why that study? 

I have studied biotechnology and then I specialized in immunology during my master. I was really fascinated by how perfectly designed the immune system is and I wanted to manipulated it to revert different diseases such as autoimmunity and cancer.

‘Today’s molecules for tomorrow’s medicine’. What does this mean for you? 

That we need to understand how all the molecules of our body works in order to improve the therapies in medicine. 

Who is your great example as scientists? And please give a motivation why.

I admire this scientist who cares about integrity and the good science. But more important I appreciate the human being. My PhD supervisor, Daniel Benítez is a great example that being smart and a good scientist doesn’t mean that you cannot be approachable. I am really glad that he taught me important skills for science such as organisation and planification. Since I am in the RIMLS I think I have a lot of great examples as scientists.

Which research discovery that you have made has made you most proud? 

 I am really proud of every little successful step I am doing on my research because at the end is what leads to your big discovery. If I have to choose one in particular I would say that I am really proud of being involved in a clinical trial for multiple sclerosis patients using tolerogenic dendritic cells.

Given unlimited finance what experiment would you perform?

One of the current limitations of immunotherapy using natural occurring dendritic cells subsets is the low frequency of this cells. I would like to set a research line which involved the generation of dendritic cells subsets from blood precursors in order to have enough cells to prepare the vaccines.   

What does your working area (desk, office) look like and what does it say about you (or your research)? 

When I am performing experiments it is a little bit of “chaos” however I always try to keep the things I am doing as much organised and planned as possible.

What type of person are you, quick insights: