Àngels López, Author at Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

July 3, 2017July 3, 2017

New research group boosts neuroengineering focus at IBEC

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) gains a world-renowned neuroscientist and psychologist with the move this week of ICREA professor Paul Verschure and his Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems group (SPECS) from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra to the institute.

A multidisciplinary group founded in 2005, SPECS aims to find a unified theory of mind, brain and body by using synthetic methods, and to apply such a theory to the development of new cognitive technologies. It’s led by ICREA professor and ERC grantee Paul Verschure, who has an MA and PhD in psychology and who has pursued his research in the USA (San Diego Neurosciences Institute and the Salk Institute) and Europe (University of Amsterdam, University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).

June 30, 2017

Micro-swimmers that remove disease-causing bacteria from water

IBEC researchers, together with their collaborators from the Max Planck for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, have engineered tiny robots that can remove disease-causing bacteria, such as E. coli, from water.

Contaminated drinking water is a persistent public health problem that can cause potentially life-threatening illnesses when proper treatment isn’t available, as in many areas of the world. It can be disinfected with chlorine or other disinfectants, but some hardy bacteria and other microorganisms stick around and can be hard to remove. Sometimes, the byproducts of these disinfectants can be harmful to human health as well.

June 27, 2017June 26, 2017

“El BIST creix afegint l’IBEC als centres que el componen”

An article about IBEC’s incorporation in BIST appears, along with an interview with Andreu Mas-Colell, in yesterday’s edition of El Punt Avui.

June 26, 2017

IBEC joins the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology

The Board of Trustees of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), presided over by Andreu Mas-Colell, has approved the incorporation of IBEC as a new member.

IBEC will bring its expertise and excellent research in the confluence between biology and engineering to BIST, an initiative of six of Catalonia’s research centers of excellence – the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE), and the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona (IRB Barcelona) – to increase their levels of collaboration and build a joint scientific project together. BIST’s strength is based on the research capacity of its centers and its potential to promote cutting-edge research projects in multidisciplinary research.

June 26, 2017June 20, 2017

IBEC at the forefront of research in mechanobiology

Today three IBEC group leaders – Pere Roca-Cusachs, Vito Conte and Xavier Trepat – consolidate the institute’s leadership in mechanobiology by publishing a review of the field in Nature Cell Biology.

Their paper, “Quantifying forces in cell biology”, summarizes a wide range of sensors and sensing methods able to quantify the forces generated by cells. During the last two decades, advances in our understanding of these mechanisms have allowed researchers to find out more about cell-generated forces at different scales, ranging from molecular forces – how a protein domain folds – to long-range supra-cellular force patterns such as the ones that govern wound healing or collective cell migration.

June 19, 2017June 19, 2017

“El cielo azul fuera de la caja”

An opinion piece by the University of Leicester’s Salvador Macip, a speaker at the recent IBEC 10th Anniversary Symposium, appeared in El Periodico on Friday.

June 19, 2017June 15, 2017

IBEC researcher selected by EC for ECSITE meeting

Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches postdoc Miquel Bosch is one of just six Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellows to be invited by the European Commission to participate in the annual ECSITE Conference 2017.

Taking place in Porto this week, the conference is the largest in Europe devoted to communicating science, attracting more than 1000 people. Miquel has been specially selected, along with five other MSCA fellows from all over Europe – out of a total of more than 100,000 – to take part at their stand at the event, where he will explain his research in a visual and attractive way, “Shedding light upon the brain”.

June 8, 2017

“Una década de ingeniería para reparar el cuerpo humano“

IBEC’s 10th birthday featured in La Vanguardia yesterday, with an article and photo of Tuesday’s part of the symposium.

June 9, 2017June 6, 2017

Happy 10th birthday, IBEC

2017 sees the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) celebrate its first ten years of research activity, with this week’s 10th Anniversary Symposium kicking off the celebrations.

It’s been a hair-raisingly fast climb up to the near top of the tree of centres in the Catalan research arena, with IBEC already holding its own alongside bigger and more established organizations for scientific output, number of ERC grants, patents, spin-offs, training programmes, national or EU-level stamps and endorsements, and other important indicators.

June 17, 2020June 1, 2017

Non-invasive analysis technique contributes to a better understanding of COPD

Some research published in PLOS ONE represents a new step towards translating IBEC’s basic research – specifically the novel signal processing and interpretation algorithms developed by Raimon Jané’s group – to clinical applications in hospitals.

The group collaborated with the Hospital del Mar-IMIM in Barcelona to tackle the current lack of instruments for assessing respiratory muscle activation during the breathing cycle in clinical conditions.