Bioinformatician
About me
Hi, I'm Ander — a bioinformatician with a background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and a Master's and PhD in Biomedicine and Molecular Oncology. My research has focused on uncovering the mechanisms of non-coding mutations in cancer (especially hematological neoplasias) and on developing machine learning tools for detecting and benchmarking somatic mutations in whole-genome and exome sequencing data. After returning from my postdoc in Toronto, I'm now based in Asturias, Spain, and looking to collaborate with people and organizations who are as passionate about research as I am. When I'm not debugging, you'll probably find me outdoors, running, bouldering, or getting lost in a good science fiction book.
Career
| Position | Institution | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Postdoctoral Fellow Sara Borrell fellowship |
Health Research Institute of Asturias - ISPA (Spain) | 2026–Today |
| Postdoctoral Fellow Ontario Genomics & CANSSI Ontario fellowship |
University of Toronto - UofT (Canada) Ontario Institute for Cancer Research - OICR (Canada) |
2023–2025 |
| Research Assistant | University of Oviedo - UniOvi (Spain) | 2022–2023 |
| PhD in Biomedicine and Molecular Oncology Cum laude, international PhD and extraordinary doctorate awards Basque Government FPI fellowship |
University of Oviedo - UniOvi (Spain) | 2017–2022 |
| Visiting researcher (during PhD) EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant |
University of Oulu (Finland) | 09/2021-11/2021 |
| MSc in Biomedicine and Molecular Oncology Basque Government and BBK scholarships |
University of Oviedo - UniOvi (Spain) | 2016–2017 |
| BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Basque Government scholarship |
University of the Basque Country - UPV/EHU (Spain) | 2012–2016 |
In 2021, I co-founded, together with a group of friends, the non-profit organization “Grupo de R de Asturias” (Asturias R Group), where I currently serve as Secretary. This association promotes the use of R through training courses and scientific visualization competitions for students, teachers, and researchers, in collaboration with other research centers such as the Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation of the Principality of Asturias (FINBA).
Selected publications
* Indicates equal contribution | # Indicates corresponding author
- Díaz-Navarro,A.#, Zhang,X., Jiao,W., Wang,B. and Stein,L#. (2025) In silico generation of synthetic cancer genomes using generative AI. Cell Genomics. DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2025.100969.
- Díaz-Navarro,A., Bousquets-Muñoz,P., Nadeu,F., López-Tamargo,S., Beà,S., Campo,E. and Puente,X.S.# (2023) RFcaller: a machine learning approach combined with read-level features to detect somatic mutations. NAR Genom Bioinform, 5, lqad056. DOI: 10.1093/nargab/lqad056
- Nadeu,F.*, Martin-Garcia,D.*, Clot,G., Díaz-Navarro,A., Duran-Ferrer,M., Navarro,A., Vilarrasa-Blasi,R., Kulis,M., Royo,R., Gutiérrez-Abril,J., et al. (2020) Genomic and epigenomic insights into the origin, pathogenesis, and clinical behavior of mantle cell lymphoma subtypes. Blood, 136, 1419–1432. DOI: 10.1182/blood.2020005289
- Escudero,L., Llort,A., Arias,A., Diaz-Navarro,A., Martínez-Ricarte,F., Rubio-Perez,C., Mayor,R., Caratù,G., Martínez-Sáez,E., Vázquez-Méndez,É., et al. (2020) Circulating tumour DNA from the cerebrospinal fluid allows the characterisation and monitoring of medulloblastoma. Nat Commun, 11, 5376. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19175-0
- Suzuki,H.*, Kumar,S.A.*, Shuai,S., Diaz-Navarro,A., Gutierrez-Fernandez,A., De Antonellis,P., Cavalli,F.M.G., Juraschka,K., Farooq,H., Shibahara,I., et al. (2019) Recurrent noncoding U1 snRNA mutations drive cryptic splicing in SHH medulloblastoma. Nature, 574, 707–711. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1650-0
- Shuai,S.*, Suzuki,H.*, Diaz-Navarro,A.*, Nadeu,F., Kumar,S.A., Gutierrez-Fernandez,A., Delgado,J., Pinyol,M., López-Otín,C., Puente,X.S., et al. (2019) The U1 spliceosomal RNA is recurrently mutated in multiple cancers. Nature, 574, 712–716. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1651-z.