Carles Lalueza Fox

Carles Lalueza Fox (Barcelona, 1965) is a Spanish biologist specialized in the study of ancient DNA. A doctor in Biology for the University of Barcelona, he worked in Cambridge and Oxford as well as in the private genetics company CODE Genetics of Iceland. Since 2008, he has served as a research Scientist in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC – Pompeu Fabra University).

He is a specialist in DNA recovery techniques from the remains of the past, in phylogenetic reconstruction of extinct species, in the rebuilding of past migrations in human populations and in the evolutionary genetics of Neanderthals. In 2010, the magazine Science published a study directed by Svante Pääbo, which demonstrated the presence of Neanderthal DNA in the Homo sapiens for the first time. Lalueza was one of the fifty investigators that collaborated on this project.

Lalueza-Fox also directed the first sequencing of a European mesolithic genome at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona (2014). The team of scientists led by him discovered that African versions of pigmentation genes determined his skin color, but that he had blue eyes now associated with northern Europeans.