Since 2018, Dr. Raquel Hurtado-Ortiz is the Head of the National Biobank of Microorganisms (CNCM), an International Depositary Authority (IDA), which holds microorganisms and cell lines deposited for purposes of French and international patent procedures, within the framework of the Budapest Treaty and sponsored by the French Institute of Industrial Property. Likewise, since 2023 she is coordinator of strategic projects of the Technology Department of Institut Pasteur, Paris.
She is a chemist-bacteriologist-parasitologist and holds a master and a PhD degree in Immunology from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico. During her master and doctoral studies (2002-2008), she was professor of histology and microbiology at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and she worked analysing the immune response during mycobacterial infections in a murine model during her master and PhD thesis. During her postdoctoral research (2010-2012) she worked at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, in the Mycobacterial Genetics Unit, analysing genes involved in the oxidative stress response during the Tuberculosis infection. She worked as scientific project manager at the Biological Resource Centre of the Institut Pasteur (CRBIP) and was co-leader of the whole-bacterial-genome sequencing project for the Collection of the Institut Pasteur (CIP), where she also carried-out research projects focused on the description of new bacterial species (2013-2017). From 2018 to 2022 she was an active participant in working groups within the Research Ministry of France regarding Access and Benefit-Sharing issues and the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol. From 2019 to 2022 she was member of the Advisory Board of the European project RI-VIS and member of the interim National Coordinators Forum of the European Research Infrastructure for Microbial biobanks (MIRRI).
Currently, she is an active member of the Budapest Treaty Forum, coordinated by the World Intellectual Property Organization, member of the Digital Sequence Information (DSI) Scientific Network and member of the Governing Board of the European project ISIDORe. She is also officer for technical and management issues on the board of the European Organization for Microbial Biobanks (ECCO).
