The Rafael del Pino Foundation, as part of its Programme for Attracting Teaching Talent, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Ophthalmological Research Foundation in order to contribute to the return of outstanding Spanish researchers working in centres of excellence abroad. The objective pursued by the Rafael del Pino Foundation with the creation of the Rafael del Pino Chairs is to raise the level of teaching and research in the best Spanish universities.
With the recovery of researchers and their incorporation into Spanish universities, the quality of the training that our university students receive is improved.
The first Rafael del Pino professor at the Fundación de Investigación Oftalmológica was the Dr. Miguel Coca-Prados who held the Chair from 2009-2017. Dr. Coca-Prados is Professor of Ophthalmology at Yale University School of Medicine (USA), where he has developed his professional career. Miguel Coca-Prados is Rafael del Pino Professor of Genetic Ophthalmology of Ocular Diseases. Professor Coca-Prados holds a degree in Biology from the University of Salamanca. Throughout his prolific academic and research career he has been: Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at Yale University; Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Microbiology of Dr. David A. Wolff at Ohio State University; Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at Rockefeller University in New York and Ophthalmology Research Scientist and Principal Investigator in Ophthalmology at Yale University School of Medicine. He has published numerous scientific papers and his research work has received several awards, most recently in 2006, when he received the Yla-Pfizer Visiting Professorship Award. He is a Principal Investigator at the Ophthalmology Research Foundation.
Continuing with the activity of Dr. Coca Prados and at the proposal of the Ophthalmological Research Foundation, the Dr. Héctor González Iglesias will hold the one-year Rafael del Pino Chair to support research on "New approaches to the study of neurodegenerative eye diseases: glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Héctor González Iglesias holds a degree in Chemistry from the University of Oviedo and a European PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oviedo. He is a member of the International Biometals Society (ISB); the Spanish Society of Analytical Chemistry (SEQA); and Zinc-Net: the Network for the Biology of Zinc (UK). He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Ocular Genetics Unit of the Ophthalmological Research Foundation.
