Lecturer Carlos Tornero appointed new member of the Young Academy of Spain
UAB lecturer Carlos Tornero Dacasa has been elected a full member of the Academia Joven de España along with six other researchers from among the 142 candidatures presented. The seven will be part of this 50-member institution that promotes science among young people in Spain.
He lectures in the bachelor's degree in Archaeology and in the master's degree in Prehistoric Archaeology, where he has introduced innovative teaching content in the areas of bioarchaeology and archaeobiochemistry, some of them still unpublished in Spain.
On 17 June, UAB prehistory lecturer Carlos Tornero Dacasa was chosen full member of the Academia Joven de España. Only seven of the 142 candidatures presented were chosen to form part of this institution.
The selection was made by an independent international committee ormed by prestigious researchers from different disciplines. In addition to their academic achievements, other factors were taken into account such as diversity and multidiciplinary in their work areas.
Academic and research trajectory
Lecturer Tornero has worked as researcher at international centres such as the universities of Columbia or Cape Town, as well as the MNHN-CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research at the French National Museum of Natural History) in Paris. Since 2016 he is researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) and a member of the Atapuerca team, among others.
In 2022 he was selected Ramón y Cajal researcher to develop the line of research in animal domestication through archaeology and chemical biomarkers in particular, and he currently directs the Biogeochemistry Laboratory of the Department of Prehistory at the UAB. In 2023 the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) published the list of the winners of the Consolidator Grant 2022 call. His research project READ "Revealing Earliest Animal Domestication in the Fertile Crescent" was awarded with a record amount of 1.91 million euros to be developed at the UAB.
He lectures in the bachelor's degree in Archaeology and in the master's degree in Prehistoric Archaeology, where he has introduced innovative teaching content in the areas of bioarchaeology and archaeobiochemistry, some of them still unpublished in Spain.
His research deploys the integration of isotopic analysis in archaeology and paleoecology in particular, making it possible to represent the living conditions, changes and adaptations of past animal species through the fossil record. He has participated in more than 200 communications in international conferences and led almost a hundred publications in his field, including articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Human Evolution or Scientific Reports (Nature). He is currently working on the development of new molecular biomarkers for bioarchaeology research.
An average age of 40
The average age of the seven new members in the Academia Joven de España is 40 years. Researchers were selected from the fields of archaeology, sociology, biology, the study of medical applications, electrocatalysis, theoretical chemistry and phylogenomics. In addition to lecturer Tornero, José Jaime Baldoví Jachán, Elena del Corro García, Rosa María Fernández García, Francisco Pelayo García de Arquer, Irene Lebrusán Murillo and Ana Ortega Molina were chosen as full members.
The Academia Joven de España, founded in 2019, is formed by 50 members, with a limitation of 5 years for each new member (each year 10 enter, this year 7). Its main objective is to promote science as a career option among young people through the visibility of exceptionally bright young people.