Janire Saez

Janire Saez

Ramon y Cajal and Ikerbasque Fellow

PhD in Chemistry
Faculty of Pharmacy

Ramón y Cajal since 2025 and Ikerbasque Research Fellow since 2021. My research team focuses on developing human Organ-on-Chip systems, where innovative microtechnologies are applied to respond specific questions related to cancer research. My research has contributed to assess cancer research from a multidisciplinary fields, and demostrated that complex cancer processes (e.g cell migration) can be investigated using in vitro models tailored to replicate physiological conditions. These models are integrated with microtechnologies to monitor intricate biological events, providing an alternative to animal models. The impact of my research is reflected on the relevance of publications, granted projects, and scienctific and public disemmination resulting from it. Since my incorporation into the UPV/EHU, I have obtained several competitive projects as PI (Proyectos generación del conocimiento (2024), Fundación Vital (2023), Proyectos Estratégicos en Salud (RIS3) from the Basque Government (2022, 2023, 2024), ANR France (2022). I am currently supervisor of two PhD students. I am an outreach advocate and I participate yearly in Conocelas (ASEICA), Zientzia Astea and Emakumeak Zientzian (UPV/EHU), and European Researcher`s Night initiatives to inspire students to choose a STEM career path, especially girls.

Technical Committee and Promotion Committee member of microTAS conference (2023-2025). Review Editor of Frontiers in Electronics, Reviewer for IEEE Sensors Conference. Alumnae of Newham College (University of Cambridge). Appointed as jury for the Francisca Aculodi awards 2024 for best Bachelor´s thesis integrating the gender perspective.

Bachelor´s degree in Chemistry in 2012 and Master's degree in Pharmacology in 2013 from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). In 2014 I started my Ph.D. in Microfluidics titled "Integration of functional materials into microfluidic devices for fluidic control and sensing" at the CIC microGUNE (Arrasate-Mondragon), continuing in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) where I received my Ph.D. in 2017. During this period, I undertook international research stays with Prof. Chumbimundi-Torres (University of Central Florida, 4 months), and Prof. Dermot Diamond´s lab (Dublin City University, 1 month) where I had the opportunity to interact with people from other backgrounds such as biologists, materials engineers and resulting in 12 successful publications in high impact journals (Q1) and 26 communications at competitive international conferences. In addition to this, I participated in several national (Elkartek, GOVA, MINECO) and European projects (FP7: NAPES).
In 2019, I started the Marie Curie Individual Fellowship where I developed organ-on-chip models to understand the role of the interstitium in cancer metastasis. I obtained funding from several national and European agencies (H2020) such as Marie Curie (2019), Basque Government Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019), and collaborated in writing proposals for European Consortiums such as RISE, ITN (H2020). I was supervisor of 4 Master students and daily supervisor of 2 PhD students. These research years led to the collaboration with high profile scientists as Prof. Roisin Owens from Cambridge University and, Prof. David Mecerreyes from Polymat (UPV/EHU), that lead to the publication of 11 articles and 1 book chapter in prestigious journals (Q1) and 9 communications at international conferences.