Toni Gabaldón is ICREA Research Professor jointly affiliated to the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), where he leads the Comparative Genomics group (http://www.cgenomics.org/) Dr. Gabaldón has published over 200 publications and his work has received over 18000 citations (h-index=65). His research focuses on understanding how genomes and phenotypes evolve within and across species to understand important evolutionary transitions such as the emergence of pathogenesis. In this regard he has used an evolutionary genomics approach to understand the origin and spread of emerging human pathogens.