ProfDavid Gallego Ortega

I was awarded my PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine in July 2008 at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain. After a brief position at TCD Pharma, a biotechnology spin-off company, I moved to the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in 2009 to pursue postdoctoral studies on mammary gland development and breast cancer. My postdoc at the Garvan provided me with a deep technical and conceptual foundation for mammary gland biology and how deregulation of developmental pathways contributes to breast cancer. During this stage, I also developed a strong interest in mechanisms of communication between different cellular compartments within the tissue ecosystem, which in turn set the foundations for establishing my research group and independent career direction in 2015.

Early career - I was awarded a 4-year early career Fellowship from the National Breast Cancer Foundation / co-sponsored by the Cure Cancer Research Foundation (2012-2016). During this stage of my career, I also participated as co-investigator in several successful grant applications, contributing to their design, writing and generation of preliminary data (2 NHMRC grants $1,62M, and 3 CINSW equipment grants $1M).

Mid-career - The direction of my independent scientific career led me to join the emerging field of single-cell genomics and this underpinned the award of a Cancer Institute NSW Career Development Fellowship (2017-2019). The leadership in the early adoption and development of new single-cell RNAseq technology led to co-lead the inception of the Garvan-Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics at the Garvan Institute. The successful deployment of these technologies has fast-tracked my research, attracting $1.75M of independent competitive funding since 2017 (CINSW fellowship 2017, CCNSW project grant 2018 and SPHERE CAG UNSW grant 2019, UNSW 3R grant 2020).