Miquel Porta

Miquel Porta (Barcelona, 1957) is a Catalan physician and epidemiologist. Appointed by the International Epidemiological Association (IEA)[2], in 2008 he succeeded the Canadian epidemiologist John M. Last as Editor of "A Dictionary of Epidemiology".^{[1] [2]}

He is currently the head of the Clinical and Molecular Epidemiology of Cancer Unit ^[3] at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research (IMIM - Hospital del Mar - prbb) [3]. He is also a Professor of Preventive Medicine & Public Health, School of Medicine, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) ^[4], and an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) ^[5].

After graduating from the UAB School of Medicine in 1981, Porta was during 3 years a Fellow with the Division of Clinical Pharmacology of UAB. He was then awarded a Fulbright scholarship to pursue the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at UNC, where he was later a Burroughs Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow in Pharmacoepidemiology.

The current three main lines of research of his Unit at IMIM are: 1) Clinical and molecular epidemiology of pancreatic cancer and cancer of the extrahepatic biliary system. Gene-environment interactions with organochlorine compounds in the etiopathogenesis of pancreatic diseases. 2) Screening, early clinical detection, and "diagnostic delay" in cancer. 3) Assessing the impact on human health of Persistent Organic Pollutant (POPs).^[6]

Other than at the UAB School of Medicine, he has also taught on molecular epidemiology, clinical epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology at other institutions, including McGill University (Montreal, Canada), Imperial College (London), the European Educational Programme in Epidemiology (Firenze, Italy), the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (Münster, Germany), several universities in Brazil and Mexico, and at Harvard, where he was on sabbatical in 1998-1999. He has acted as a grant and doctoral thesis reviewer for the Karolinska Institutet, the Finnish Academy, Diabetes UK, and several other European and American scientific organisations.

From 1994 to 1998 he was President of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE). From 2002 to 2005 he was European Councillor of the International Epidemiological Association (IEA) and Chairman of the IEA European Epidemiology Federation ^[7].

He is (co)author of over 280 papers ^[8], published in journals as The Lancet, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gut, International Journal of Cancer, British Journal of Cancer, Mutation Research, Carcinogenesis, Molecular Carcinogenesis, Cancer Causes & Control, Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, Environmental Health Perspectives, Environmental & Molecular Mutagenesis, Chemosphere, Mutagenesis, Environmental Research, Environment International, Milbank Quarterly, Epidemiology, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, International Journal of Epidemiology or Preventive Medicine.

Beyond his main lines of research, he has written on topics such as causality ^[9] and the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) / Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) link,^[10][11] persistent organic pollutants and public health,^{[12][13][14][15]} genome metaphors,^[16] the bibliographic impact factor and scientific journals,^[17][18][19] or the roles of scientific associations.^[20][21]

He is a member of the editorial boards of the 'European Journal of Clinical Investigation' ^[22], ‘Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health’ [4], ‘Preventive Medicine’ ^[23], ‘Epidemiology’ ^[24], and the ‘Journal of Clinical Epidemiology’^[25], an editorial consultant to ‘The Lancet’[5], and a Co-editor of the ‘European Journal of Epidemiology’^[26].

References

1. ^ Porta M, ed. A dictionary of epidemiology. 5th. edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-531450-2 and ISBN 0-19-531450-6 [1]
2. ^ "Oxford University Press: A Dictionary of Epidemiology: Miquel Porta". Us.oup.com. http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Medicine/EpidemiologyBiostatistics/?view=usa&ci=9780195314502. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
3. ^ "Miquel porta - IMIM Institut Municipal d'Investigació Mèdica". Imim.es. http://www.imim.es/programesrecerca/epidemiologia/en_grecm.html. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
4. ^ Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. "Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona". Uab.cat. http://www.uab.cat/english/. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
5. ^ http://www.unc.edu/gradrecord/programs/epid.html
6. ^ Porta M, et al. Monitoring concentrations of persistent organic pollutants in the general population: the international experience. Environment International 2008; 34: 546-561.
7. ^ "IEA Change of Website URLs". Dundee.ac.uk. http://www.dundee.ac.uk/iea/Europe.htm. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
8. ^ "Miquel Porta B-5787-2008". ResearcherID.com. http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-5787-2008. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
9. ^ Geneletti SG, Gallo V, Porta M, Khoury MJ, Vineis P. Assessing causal relationships in genomics: From Bradford-Hill criteria to complex gene-environment interactions and directed acyclic graphs. Emerg Themes Epidemiol 2011 Jun 9;8(1):5. http://www.ete-online.com/content/8/1/5/abstract
10. ^ Morabia A, Porta M. Ethics of ignorance: lessons from the epidemiological assessment of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (‘Mad Cow Disease’) epidemic. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1998; 41: 259-266.
11. ^ Porta M, Morabia A. Why aren’t we more ahead? The risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease from eating Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy-infected foods: Still undetermined [Editorial]. European Journal of Epidemiology 2004; 19: 287-289.
12. ^ Porta M. Persistent organic pollutants and the burden of diabetes. The Lancet 2006; 368: 558-559.
13. ^ Porta M, Lee DH, Puigdomènech E. Transgenerational inheritance of environmental obesogens [Editorial]. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2009; 66: 141-142.
14. ^ Porta M, Zumeta E. Implementing the Stockholm treaty on POPs [Editorial]. Occupational & Environmental Medicine 2002; 59: 651-652.
15. ^ Porta M. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, persistent organic pollutants and the achievable utopias. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 2002; 56: 806-807.
16. ^ Porta M. The genome sequence is a jazz score. International Journal of Epidemiology 2003; 32: 29-31.
17. ^ Porta M. The bibliographic ‘impact factor’ of ISI, Inc.: How relevant is it really for public health journals? Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 1996; 50: 606-610.
18. ^ Porta M, Fernandez E, Bolúmar F. The “bibliographic impact factor” and the still uncharted sociology of epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology 2006; 35: 1130-1135.
19. ^ Porta M, Álvarez-Dardet C. How come scientists uncritically adopt and embody Thomson's bibliographic impact factor? [Editorial Comment] Epidemiology 2008; 19: 370-371.
20. ^ Porta M. Do we really need ‘real’ epidemiological scientific meetings? [Editorial]. European Journal of Epidemiology 2003; 18: 101-103.
21. ^ Barros H, Porta M. Bridging worlds–The European Congress of Epidemiology. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 2004; 58 (Supl. 1): iii-v.
22. ^ "European Journal of Clinical Investigation". Wiley.com. http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0014-2972&site=1. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
23. ^ "Preventive Medicine". Elsevier. http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaleditorialboard.cws_home/622934/editorialboard. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
24. ^ "Epidemiology". Journals.lww.com. 2011-02-21. http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Pages/default.aspx. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
25. ^ "Journal of Clinical Epidemiology". Elsevier. http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525472/description#description. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 
26. ^ "European Journal of Epidemiology". SpringerLink. http://www.springerlink.com/content/102883/. Retrieved 2011-03-10. 

External links

• IMIM.
• Researcher ID.
• Index Copernicus.
• Faculty of 1000 Medicine.

Persondata
Name	Porta, Miquel
Alternative names	Miquel Porta Serra
Short description	physician epidemiologist
Date of birth	1957 April 21
Place of birth	Barcelona
Date of death
Place of death