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Iago Pinal-Fernandez, M.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., is a Staff Clinician in the Muscle Disease Unit of the NIAMS/NIH. Dr. Pinal-Fernandez is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Pinal-Fernandez graduated from the Santiago de Compostela School of Medicine and completed his 5-year Internal Medicine residency in the Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona. He has two doctoral degrees, the first in medicine and the second in bioinformatics, two master’s degrees, one in molecular medicine and the other in research methodology, as well as a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.

Dr. Pinal-Fernandez’s research is focused on understanding the pathogenesis of inflammatory muscle diseases and on improving the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of patients with these conditions. To do so, he combines a variety of modalities of clinical and translational research. From a clinical perspective, he is involved in several natural history studies, and clinical trials to test novel treatments in patients with different types of myositis. Translationally, he is using bioinformatics and data science to understand inflammatory myositis by combining clinical, epidemiological, and molecular data.