CIESAL researcher receives prestigious medical research award in Spain
16/05/2026
Natalia Pérez Barraza, PhD candidate at the Universidad de Granada, lecturer at the Universidad de Valparaíso and CIESAL researcher, has been awarded the 2025 “Royal College of Medicine and Surgery of Cádiz” Prize, one of the highest scientific honours bestowed by the Real Academia de Medicina y Cirugía de Cádiz (Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Cadiz) in recognition of outstanding biomedical research. The Academy awarded the prize to a paper presented by the researcher as lead author, highlighting her significant contribution to the fields of medicine and biomedical research.
Natalia Pérez Barraza has focused her scientific work around biomedicine and cancer research, integrating interdisciplinary methodologies that combine histopathology, advanced biomedical analysis, and emerging technologies applied to medical research. The Academy recognised the award-winning work “as a significant contribution to the development of new lines of research in biomedicine, particularly for its potential impact on the understanding and treatment of complex diseases”. To illustrate this, the researcher cites the example of prostate cancer: “It is often a highly heterogeneous disease. Some tumours grow slowly, while others can be more aggressive. That is why it is important to have more precise tools, such as Artificial Intelligence, to help detect and analyse the tumour more effectively, facilitating a more accurate diagnosis.”
The presentation given by Natalia Pérez Barraza forms part of the work on her doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr Víctor Carriel Araya of the Department of Histology at the Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Granada, Spain, and in collaboration with Dr Claudio Córdova Lepe of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Biomedical Research and Engineering for Health (MEDING), Chile.
The official award ceremony took place on Thursday 22 January in the Main Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in Cádiz, during the Formal Opening Session of the 2026 Academic Year for the Real Academia de Medicina y Cirugía de Cádiz, one of the most important official events in the institution’s academic calendar.
Subsequently, and as part of the official scientific activities associated with the 2025 RAMCA Awards, the public defence of the award-winning work took place on Thursday 7 May 2026, also in the Faculty’s Main Hall. During this session, Natalia Pérez Barraza presented the main results, methodological foundations and projections of the award-winning research to academics, researchers and specialists in the field of biomedicine. During the academic ceremony, her appointment as a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia de Medicina y Cirugía de Cádiz was also formalised, a distinction reserved for researchers and professionals with outstanding scientific merits and international standing.