Scientific Founding Members

Prof. Ciril Rozman was born in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 1929. He is one of the most relevant figures in the field of Spanish Internal Medicine with his own comprehensive vision of the meaning of this specialty. His research has focussed on Haematology.

He was educated under the direction of Professors A. Pedro Pons and P. Farreras Valentí. In 1965 he was awarded a Professorship in Medical Pathology at the University of Salamanca, which he held until 1969 when, following in the footsteps of his two great teachers, he left to join the University of Barcelona. He was director of the Farreras Valentí School of Haemopathy until his retirement and head of the Medicine division at the Hospital Clínic and of the Department of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the university.

In the field of haematology, he is considered one of the world's leading experts on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (LLC), and is the first Spanish author to receive editorship of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. His involvement in therapeutic haematology has focussed on Bone Marrow Transplants and he carried out the first allograft transplant in Spain. He has also dedicated himself to the search for prognostic factors and morphological and biological analysis of malignant blood diseases, and more recently has led the establishment of the first Spanish haematopoietic donor bank of umbilical cord blood.

Prof. Rozman is an active member of the most important international committees in the field of Bone Marrow Transplants and his scientific activity is reflected by more than 820 articles (more than 350 of which are published in international journals) and is supported by 96 books. He is director of the Spanish Internal Medicine text (Farreras-Rozman) which has a large readership throughout Spanish speaking countries, and is editor of the journal Revista Medicina Clínica. Amongst his honours and distinctrions, he currently holds the Creu de Sant Jordi, the Narcís Monturiol and the José Trueta de la Generalitat de Catalunya medals; he holds the Premi Rei Jaume I; he is also scientific Ambassador for the Republic of Slovenia and Doctor Honoris Causa at the universities of Granada and Salamanca.

Prof. Rozman's curriculum vitae is available in the recently published homage Ciril Rozman: el reto asumido (Ciril Rozman: the challenge assumed), published by the Medicine and Medical Humanities Foundation.

He was a boarding student with professors P. Farreras Valentí, A. Pedro Pons and S. Woessner. He worked for 20 years under the direction of Professors Ciril Rozman and Joan Lluís Vives Corrons. In 1975-76 and 1981-82 he made research stays at the University of Paris (Beaujon Hospital) and at Harvard University (Massachusetts General Hospital).

He was Head of the Haematology Service at the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital - HGTiP (1991-1995), Medical Director of the HGTiP (1995-97) and Managing Director of the same center (1997-2002). He has been Center Director of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) (2003-2009), Scientific Director of the ICO, Director of the University Relations Program and Head of the Haematology-Laboratory Service of the ICO-Badalona until 2018. He is currently an honorary consultant of the ICO. He was tenured Professor of Medicine at UB and UAB (1985-1997 and 1997-2007, respectively) and, Professor of Medicine-Haematology at UAB from 2008 to 2018. From 2018 to 2021 he was Professor Emeritus of the UAB and from 2021 to the present day he is Honorary Professor of the same university.

He is Trustee and Scientific Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Foundation, founding member and president of the Management Committee of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, vice-president of the Josep Carreras Foundation, Numerary Academician of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia and Doctor "Honoris Causa" by the University of Asunción.

Prof. Feliu is a prestigious researcher in the field of procedures and integrated methods of haematological diagnosis, especially electron microscopy of blood and bone marrow cells and in the study of spleen pathology, with relevant contributions in these areas at national and international level.

He has collaborated in the writing of 85 books and has published 386 articles, half of them in international journals, with an h-factor of 33.

He has held executive positions in the journal Medicina Clínica, the Spanish version of the journal JAMA, the Tratado de Medicina Interna Farreras-Rozman, and the book: Semiología y Métodos de Exploración en Medicina.