ABOUT US

José Manuel Giménez Amaya (Madrid, Spain, 1958) is a neuroscientist and philosopher, professor of anatomy and embryology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2002-2010) and professor of science, reason and faith at the University of Navarre since 2012. He has published more than 120 publications and 10 books. He has been a visiting scientist/professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), The University of Rochester (New York, USA), The University of California at San Diego (California, USA), The University of Heidelberg (Germany) and the University of Aarhus (Denmark). In 2021 he was elected a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion (Cambridge, UK).

José María Domínguez Roldán has a degree in medicine and surgery and a double doctorate in bioethics and medicine and surgery (distinction). He is currently clinical director of the intensive care unit at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital in Seville, associate professor at the University of Seville (Medical Ethics Department) and at the Institute for Donation and Transplantation. He is or has been chairman of various scientific societies, such as the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Society of Intensive Care and Coronary Care Units, the Andalusian Society of Bioethics or the Certification Committee of the European Organisation of Transplant Coordinators. In 2020, he received the Nicolás Rodríguez Abaytúa Prize for research on Bioethics and/or Medical Ethics, awarded by the Royal National Academy of Medicine, for his work “Anthropological and bioethical approach to the definition of a person through the medical diagnosis of encephalic death”. He is the author of several hundred scientific publications in the world’s most prestigious journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine.

José Ignacio Murillo is a lecturer at the University of Navarre. He defended his doctoral thesis in 1993, under the supervision of the lecturer Leonardo Polo. He has extended his studies and undertaken research visits to universities in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. He currently teaches philosophical anthropology and social anthropology at the University of Navarre. Since 2010 he has directed the Mind-Brain Group at the Culture and Society Institute (ICS) of the University of Navarre. Among the subjects he has addressed are the understanding of what is uniquely human within the context of scientific knowledge and in dialogue with diverse philosophical traditions, as well as the study of habits, the theoretical aspects of certain mental illnesses, and the relationships between anthropology, biology, and technology, with a particular emphasis on the distinctions between animal and human intelligence, living beings and machines, and the challenges posed by transhumanist proposals.

Jesús Avila is a CSIC Professor “ad honorem” at the Severo Ochoa Centre for Molecular Biology, where he was previously Director. He has been working on the neuronal cytoskeleton for forty years and is currently investigating the role of the tau protein in neurodegenerative diseases (tauopathies) such as Alzheimer’s disease. He is a member, by election, of different organisations, which include: EMBO, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the European Academy and the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of various editorial boards and has published more than 500 articles on Alzheimer’s disease.

Vicente Bellver Capella is Professor of Philosophy of Law and Political Philosophy at the University of Valencia. He carried out periods of research at the universities of Berkeley, Princeton, Cambridge, and Palermo. He was deputy judge of the District Court of Valencia, director of the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Valencia, director general of scientific policy of the Generalitat Valenciana, member of the Bioethics Committee of the Council of Europe and director of the Department of Philosophy of Law and Politics of the University of Valencia. He is currently a member of the Spanish Bioethics Committee and of the Pontifical Academy for Life. His fields of research are human rights, political ecology, bioethics and biolaw. He has published three books and more than 175 papers in scientific journals or as book chapters.

Javier DeFelipe is a Research Professor at the Cajal Institute (CSIC) specialized in the microanatomical study of the brain. After having participated in the NASA Neurolab project as principal investigator of the Spanish scientific team, he leads or participates in a very significant way in two large projects: the Cajal Blue Brain and the Human Brain Project. Thanks to these projects, it has been possible to develop several tools and new anatomical and computational methods that represent an important technological contribution to the study of the brain. Javier DeFelipe is considered the most outstanding neuroanatomist today who has followed in Cajal’s footsteps through the use and development of new technologies.