Marc Yeste, FHEA, FRSB, FYAE, graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Biology)
from the University of Girona, an MSc in Biotechnology, and a European PhD in
Reproductive Biology. He broadened his academic background through studies in other fields, including social sciences (Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology, with an extraordinary award for the best academic
score), law (Bachelor of Laws, LLB; Bachelor’s Degree in Legal Sciences of Public Administration; and Master of Laws, LLM), and humanities (Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Philosophy).
Marc
was a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of
London (2006-2007) and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at
the Faculty of Human Medicine, University of Girona (2008). In 2011, he moved
to the Department of Animal Medicine and Surgery, Autonomous University of
Barcelona, as a Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He taught
Reproductive Technology and Physiology of Obstetrics, and Animal Reproduction
at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. In 2014, Marc joined the Nuffield
Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, as a Marie
Curie Fellow, and began to lecture in the MSc in Clinical Embryology, in
which he is still involved. In 2016, he returned to the University of Girona as
a Senior Research Fellow (Ramón y Cajal).
Currently,
Marc is director of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Technology
(INTEA; www.udg.edu/en/instituts/intea) at the University of Girona, and an ICREA Academia Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Biology. He is also a Principal Investigator at the Centre
for Reproductive Biotechnology (TechnoSperm; www.technosperm.com). He teaches at the
Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Nursing, the Faculty of Sciences and the
Polytechnic School, and for the MSc courses in Food Biotechnology and in
Molecular Biology and Biomedicine. In addition, he has been a Guest Lecturer at
the University of Oxford (UK), the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain),
the University of São Paulo (Brazil), the University of Alicante (Spain), the Antonio
Nariño University (Colombia), the Federal University of Lavras (Brazil) and the
University of Murcia (Spain).
On
the other hand, Marc is Editor-in-Chief of Animal Reproduction Science (Elsevier);
Senior Editor of Scientific Reports (the multidisciplinary journal of the
Nature Publishing Group); Associate Editor of BMC Biology, Reproduction,
Fertility and Development (CSIRO Publishing), Frontiers in Physiology
(Frontiers) and Frontiers in Endocrinology (Frontiers); and Editorial
Board Member of Theriogenology and Cryobiology (Elsevier). He has served as a peer reviewer for more than 130 scientific journals and as an expert evaluator for research grants at various funding agencies. He
was the Chair of the International Conference on Boar Semen Preservation
(2019-2024), and a member of the Board of Governors of the Association for
Applied Animal Andrology (AAAA, 2018-2020).
His
research has tackled different angles of Reproductive Biology in mammals
(encompassing humans, pigs, cattle, horses, donkeys, sheep, mice, cats and
dogs): sperm physiology (including sperm capacitation), interactions of sperm
with epithelial cells from different reproductive tissues (epididymis and
fallopian tube/oviduct), presence and growth of microbes in semen and
implications for its preservation, sperm cryopreservation, cryopreservation of
oocytes and embryos, genetics of infertility, oocyte activation deficiency, effects of ageing on reproductive health, in
vitro maturation of oocytes, and fertility preservation.
Marc’s track record includes about 480 publications: >280 papers and >160
abstracts in SCI/JCR-indexed journals, mostly Q1-ranked. In addition, he has authored five articles in non-scientific dissemination journals, 24 book chapters (editor of three), and >300 contributions to congresses (>40 as invited, plenary speaker), and is a patent inventor. He has taken part in more
than 100 research grants and contracts with companies (national and
international), including funding from the European Commission (FP7, H2020 and
Horizon Europe programmes), retaining the PI role in >40. Thus far, Marc has
supervised 18 PhD students, 16 post-docs, 41 MSc students and >70
undergraduate students. Moreover, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Medicine (RSM) and a member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and
Embryology (ESHRE), the Society for Cryobiology (SfC), the European Society of
Domestic Animal Reproduction (ESDAR), the European Federation of Animal Science
(EAAP), and the Spanish Society of Animal Reproduction (AERA).
Finally,
Marc’s teaching and research activities have been recognised nationally and
internationally. He was habilitated as a Full Professor by the Catalan Agency
for Quality Assessment of Universities (AQU) and the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation, Spain (ANECA), and received the I3 Outstanding Research Certificate (Ministry of Science, Innovation and
Universities, Spain) in 2019. In addition, he has been recognised as a
Chartered Biologist (CBiol) by the Royal Society of Biology, and as a Chartered
Scientist (CSci) and Chartered Science Teacher (CSciTeach) by the Science
Council. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), the Young Academy of Europe (FYAE), and a Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (RAED) and the Catalan Academy of Veterinary Sciences (ACVC). In 2023, he was
appointed secretary of the Young Academy of Europe.