Hector Huerga Encabo, PhD

Hector Huerga Encabo, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Haematopoietic Stem Cell Laboratory
The Francis Crick Institute
London, United Kingdom
@DrHHEncabo and @TReNDinAfrica

Postdoctoral Fellow at The Francis Crick Institute (London, UK), he received the Kay Kendall Leukemia fellowship to develop his research in the Haematopoietic Stem Cell laboratory led by Dominique Bonnet.

Hector performed his PhD in the Immunology group of Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) located at the PRBB (Barcelona) led by Dr. Cristina López-Rodríguez (2013-2018). During his PhD, he obtained a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science to study how innate immune cells work in homeostasis and sense and respond to pathogens. Specifically, he characterised a new mechanism that limits type I interferon (IFN-I) and the antiviral response in innate immune cells. For his PhD thesis, Hector received the Doctoral School PhD Extraordinary Award for the academic year 2018-2019 at UPF.

PERSONAL STATEMENT for ICIS Council Members for Inclusion and Diversity

I have always considered that a key aspect of a scientific career must be based on an open attitude to knowledge transfer, collaboration across different groups abroad and promotion of dissemination to society. For this reason, in each step of my career I would like to contribute in making science more open and accessible to everyone. During my PhD, I was elected as a representative of PhD students at the UPF Council, I participated in science policy making and research resource management. I also represented PhD students in the successful 2017-Quality Accreditation process evaluated by the Agency of University Quality (AQU) of the Catalan Government that evaluates and funds university-research laboratories. Moreover, I organized the first DCEXS-UPF-PhD symposium in 2017, which has since continued annually.

When I started my postdoc at the Crick in April 2019, I joined the Athena Swan Steering group. The Athena SWAN charter, founded in 2005, initially sought to tackle the unequal representation of women in science and has since grown and expanded its remit “to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women”. The Crick signed up to be a member of the charter in 2017 and since then we are working to ensure career paths are accessible to everyone equally at the Crick.

Now I am focused on the development of the FlowAfrica initiative, a collaborative project that I lead within the non-profit organisation TReND (https://trendinafrica.org/flowafrica/). Our objective is to bring Flow Cytometry to research institutes in Africa, who struggle to have access to this expensive equipment, by setting new flow cytometry facilities and providing access to online training.

@DrHHEncabo and @TReNDinAfrica