On Sunday 15 December, Dr. Josep Maria Miró i Meda, senior consultant in the Infectious Diseases Service at the Hospital Clínic, was nominated elected academic member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia, with seat number 35. The event consisted of an extraordinary session in which Dr. Miró gave his speech, which was about: “HIV-AID infection: over 40 years of continuous challenges”. Full member, Dr. Josep Maria Gatell, gave the reply.
Dr. Miró has carried out all his professional activity at the Hospital Clínic and the University of Barcelona, and is currently senior consultant in the Infectious Diseases Service, professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona, and director of the Master’s Degree course in AIDS at the University of Barcelona. His two research lines are infectious endocarditis—including the experimental endocarditis model—and HIV/AIDS infection, being the group leader of the IDIBAPS Endocarditis, Cardiovascular Infections and Experimental Model research group and group leader of the HIV/AIDS at the CIBER of Infectious Diseases (CIBERINFEC). Dr. Miró is President of the Drug Research Ethics Committee (CEIm) at the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona.
In the field of research, he has published over 1,188 articles, 1,000 of them referenced in PubMed. Dr. Miró has an Impact Factor of over 7,500 points, has 41,908 citations and an h-index of 93. He has supervised 24 doctoral theses, all of them with Cum Laude qualification, and three with the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. He has made over 1,100 communications in national (400) or international (700) congresses, edited 50 books and written 300 chapters in books about infectious diseases, endocarditis, HIV/AIDS and antimicrobials.
Dr. Miró is a member of infectious disease (SEIMC, SCMIMC, ASM, IDSA, ESCMID), HIV/AIDS (GESIDA, IAS, EACS) and cardiovascular infection (SEICAV, ISCVID) societies. He was president of GESIDA (1998-99), of the Catalan (SCMIMC, 2005-07) and Spanish (SEIMC, 2013-15) Societies of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and is currently president of the International Society of Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases (ISCVID) (2019-27). Dr. Miró was HIV/AIDS editor of the Revista de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica [Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases] (2002-14).
In 2017, he received the “Moreno Lopez” National Research Award from the SEIMC, and in 2019 he received the National AIDS Study Group Award (GESIDA) from the SEIMC for his professional career. Dr. Miró is one of the few European infectious disease doctors whose professional career has been recognized by both the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID Fellow) and by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA Fellow). In January 2021, he was appointed corresponding academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia (RAMC) and on 15 December 2024, elected academic member of the RAMC with seat number 35.
