Professor Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, Full Professor of the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra, has been distinguished with the award Gregorio Marañón of Medicine awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the most important recognition of Spain in the field of scientific research .

Created in 1982, these awards, endowed with 30,000 euros at each modality, distinguish scientists from Spain who are carrying out professional work of international relevance in their respective areas of research and scientific fields. They also recognize research careers that make an exceptional contribution to the advancement of science, to the better knowledge of human beings and their coexistence, to technology transfer and to the progress of humanity. 

On this occasion, Professor Martínez-González has been awarded for his unique contributions on the relevance of nutrition in preventive medicine and, in particular, of the Mediterranean per diem expenses , as well as on behavioral intervention to change lifestyles.

"It is a distinction that honors so many teams and excellent professionals with whom I have had the good fortune to collaborate and who have contributed to the fact that the Mediterranean per diem expenses and healthy lifestyles now have indisputable scientific evidence all over the planet. I am especially grateful to Professors Walter Willett, Frank Hu and Alfredo Martínez", he confesses.

More than 30 years dedicated to the research epidemiological

Miguel Ángel Martínez-González obtained his licentiate degree and doctorate in Medicine from the University of Granada, and is Full Professor of Public Health at the University of Navarra since 2005, and Full Professor attachment of Nutrition at Harvard University since 2016. He has more than 30 years of experience in research epidemiology, especially in the field of nutrition, lifestyles and cardiometabolic diseases, where he has more than 1000 indexed publications. He directs the group of research CIBEROBN of the high school de Salud Carlos III and has designed and directed large trials and cohorts, such as the SUN, PREDIMED and PREDIMED-Plus projects, which, from Spain, have shed unprecedented light and scientific evidence with worldwide impact. Their research has positioned the Mediterraneanper diem expenses and olive oil as the ideal referents of a healthy food patron saint in Preventive Medicine at a global level. Recently, Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez has been included in Clarivate's 'Highly Cited Researches 2021' list, which includes him among the 6,600 most cited scientists in the world, of which 109 are Spanish.

Since 2013 he has been actively involved, as researcher lead, together with Frank Hu (Harvard University), in several US government-funded projects on cardiovascular disease and diabetes subject 2 evaluating metabolomics in the context of interventions with per diem expenses Mediterranean.

In 1995 he launched the department de Medicina Preventiva at the University of Navarra and has been mentor of a large group of professors and full professors of Epidemiology and Public Health in Spain and the U.S. In addition, as a popularizer, his publications with the publishing house Planeta stand out, such as Salud a Ciencia Cierta (2018) and ¿Qué come? ( 2020).

Third National award of research in Medicine of the University

After the advertisement made this noon by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Martínez-González becomes the third professor of the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra to be awarded the award award Gregorio Marañón National research . 

Dr. Jesús Prieto, Full Professor of Medicine, former director of department of Internal Medicine of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra and of the area of Hepatology and Gene Therapy of the Cima University of Navarra, received it in 2014. He was awarded for his balance between research, clinical and professor activity and, especially, for his contribution to gene therapy in liver diseases and cancer, in which he stands out both for his research activity and for the transfer to clinical internship .

Dr. Jesús San Miguel, director of Translational Medicine at the Cima University of Navarra, director physician of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra and Full Professor of the School of medicine, was also distinguished in 2021 for his research in the treatment of multiple myeloma. In this subject hematological cancer, which is caused by the proliferation of plasma cells in the bone marrow that spread to other organs, an early approach to the disease achieves a significant increase in the survival of these patients.