Ignacio López-Goñi, Full Professor of Microbiology at the University of Navarra and author of the blogs knowledge dissemination microBIO and El Rincón de Pasteur, has received the award ASEBIO (association Spanish Biotechnology Companies) 2017 for Communication and knowledge dissemination of Biotechnology. The professor has obtained this award for his activity in disseminating science through new technologies, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Professor of Microbiology, Virology and Challenges of science in the 21st century, his research focuses on animal and human brucellosis, on the characterization Genetics and phenotypic characterization of virulence factors, the development of new live vaccines and molecular techniques for diagnosis and typing of Brucella bacteria, a field in which he has obtained two patents.

researcher in several national and European projects, is vice-president of group of teaching and Dissemination of the Spanish Society of Microbiology and director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of the University of Navarra.

His work in the field of knowledge dissemination began in 2011 with the blog microBIO, rated as one of the best blogs on virology in the world and which has 283 entries and 1,520,122 page views. Likewise, López-Goñi collaborates with the Naukas platform, dedicated to scientific knowledge dissemination on language Spanish. He has published two informative books: "Virus y pandemias" (2015) and "¿Funcionan las vacunas?", recently republished by Next Door Publishers, where he dismantles, in a clear and entertaining way, myths such as that some vaccines cause autism and explains the danger of antivaccine movements.

Science is in the networks

Very active on social networks such as Twitter -his account @microBIOblog has more than 20,000 followers-, Facebook -more than 5,600- and Youtube -the microBIO channel has more than 63,000 views-, in 2016 he started a new adventure of knowledge dissemination with live videos via Periscope (#microBIOscope), where he explains in a brief and entertaining way peculiarities of the microbial world.

In recent years it has also participated in knowledge dissemination events such as the annualcongress Naukas, the international event Pint of Science, the Science and Technology Weeks, conference on social networks and knowledge dissemination science, the lecture series Science and Society, etc. In 2017 he also co-organized the summer course "knowledge dissemination andscientific culture: University-Society dialogue", at the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP).

With the goal to offer training in science through the networks, in 2016 launched the first course of Microbiology in 144 characters, taught through twitter in partnership with the Spanish Society of Microbiology. Likewise, he taught MOOC courses (massive free online courses) on "The microbes around you" and "Pandemics: new viral infections".

ASEBIO will present this award to Ignacio López-Goñi on December 11 in a ceremony at the association de Prensa in Madrid, which will be attended by the president of association, Jordi Martí, and the administrative assistant of State of research, development and Innovation, Carmen Vela.