Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

IBEC KiDS DAY
2019-06-25 09:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Sala Dolors Aleu, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
El dimarts 25 de Juny celebrarem la tercera edició del KiDS DAY, on es convida al personal d’administració i als investigadors a portar els seus fills a gaudir d’un matí ple d’activitats científiques.
El KiDS DAY és una oportunitat per als membres de l’IBEC de mostrar als seus fills el seu lloc de treball i donar-los l’oportunitat de sentir-se “petits científics” per un dia, mitjançant jocs i activitats interactives.
Per tal d’assegurar que tenim un nombre manejable i segur de nens/es al laboratori, hem limitat el nombre de participants a 60. El registre es farà per ordre d’inscripció donant prioritat als fills propis dels membres, i després, si l’espai ho permet, s’estendrà als nebots/des.
Les activitats estaran focalitzades en nens de 3 a 12 anys (els nens de 3 anys han de venir acompanyats d’un pare, mare o responsable, els de 4 anys només si els pares ho consideren necessari). Un grup de voluntaris de l’IBEC vigilaran als nens en tot moment.
Registreu-los aquí abans del 21 de Juny.

Next Tuesday 25th of June we celebrate the third edition of the KiDS DAY, where all administration personnel and al researchers are invited to bring their children so they can enjoy a morning full of scientific activities.
KiDS DAY is an opportunity for IBEC members to show their children their workplace, and gives them the chance to become a ‘young researcher’ for a day by playing games and workshops.
In order to ensure that we have a managable and safe number of kids at the laboratory, we have limited the number of participants to 60. The registration will be made in order of inscription giving priority to the sons of IBEC members and them, if there are free spots and space allows it, it will be extended to nieces and nephews.
Activities will be aimed to kids between 3 and 12 years old (children aged 3 must be accompained by their father, mother or someone in charge of the kid, children aged 4 only if parents see it fit). A group of volunteers will watch the kids at all times.
You have to register here before June 21st

I Jornada de Recerca del Campus Diagonal-Besòs
2019-06-28 09:00 - 13:15 | Sala d’Actes EEBE, Edifici A,, Av. Eduard Maristany 16, 08019 Barcelona
Programa:

9:00 – 9:10
Benvinguda

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9:10 – 9:40
L’hidrogen i el futur energètic
Jordi Llorca
Grup de Nanoenginyeria de materials aplicats a l’energia; Director del Centre de
Recerca en Ciència i Enginyeria Multiescala de Barcelona.

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9:40 – 10:10
Biomaterials i medicina regenerativa
Maria Pau Ginebra
Grup de Biomaterials, Biomecànica i Enginyeria de Teixits, EEBE-UPC.

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10:10 – 10:50
Conferència convidada:
Els mitocondris i la font d’energia cel·lular
Rafael Artuch
Sotsdirector científic de l’Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu

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10:50 – 11:30
Coffee Break i Sessió de pòsters

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11:30 – 12:00
Interacció home-màquina: robots i espais interactius multimodals
Vicky Vouloutsy i Jordi-Ysard Puigbò
Grup de recerca en Sistemes Cognitius, Emotius, Perceptius i Sintètics, IBEC

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12:00 – 12:30
El paradigma energètic de les microxarxes amb recurs fotovoltaic
Joan Puig
Grup de recerca en Processat de l’Energia i Circuits Integrats, EEBE-UP

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12:00 – 12:30
Fusió termonuclear, explosions estel·lars i energia fosca
Jordi José
Grup d’Astronomia i Astrofísica, EEBE-UPC

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13:15
Dinar

IBEC Seminar: Jordi Guiu
2019-07-05 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Tracing the origin of adult intestinal stem cells
Jordi Guiu, Biotech Research & Innovation Centre – University of Copenhagen
Jordi Guiu did his PhD in Anna Bigas laboratory (IMIM and Pompeu Fabra University-Barcelona) were he focused on the genetic circuitry that controls the establishment of hematopoietic stem cells during development. Then he joined Kim B. Jensen lab (Copenhagen University) as a postdoc, were he obtained a Marie Curie fellowship. His current research is focused on the specification of intestinal stem cells during development using fate mapping technologies, state of the art imaging, biophysical modeling and a plethora of sequencing techniques.
The adult small intestine is compartmentalized into villi and crypts containing post-mitotic differentiated and proliferative cells respectively. Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) located at the bottom of crypts express markers such as Lgr5 and fuel the constant replenishment of the intestinal epithelium. Importantly, the cellular origin of adult ISCs remains unknown. Prior to birth the immature fetal intestine is structurally simpler than the adult intestine. It is characterized by villi separated by a continuous region composed of proliferative intervillus cells; crypts have not formed and there is no evidence of a stem cell niche. Interestingly, intervillus cells located within the region between villi express the adult SAB marker Lgr5. Fate mapping studies have inferred the notion that fetal Lgr5 expressing cells are unique and specialized precursors for the adult ISCs. Using unbiased quantitative lineage-tracing approaches, biophysical modeling and intestinal transplantation experiments, we now demonstrate that in the fetal epithelium on-going tissue morphogenesis leads to a dynamic exchange of cells between the villi and intervillus regions and that all cells have got the potential to contribute to the adult stem cells. Moreover, we present exciting data outlining the mechanism for tissue development based on 3D imaging and live microscopy. Our results demonstrate that large-scale tissue remodeling and cell fate specification are intertwined processes. Moreover, these findings provide a direct link between the observed plasticity and cellular reprogramming of differentiating cells in adult tissue following damage, revealing that stem cell identity is an induced rather than a hardwired property.

PhD Thesis defence: Klaudia Grechuta
2019-07-05 11:00 - 13:00 | Campus Poblenou
“Grounding body ownership and language in action: evidence from Healthy and damaged brains”
Klaudia Grechuta, Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems (SPECS) group
Klaudia Grechuta be defending her PhD thesis in the Sala 55.309 (tercera planta) Edifici Tànger, Campus del Poblenou on Friday 5th July 2019 at 11:00am.
Everyone is warmly invited to attend.
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If you’re an IBEC PhD student and would like to advertise your PhD defence on the IBEC calendar, please contact ibeccommunications@ibecbarcelona.eu

PhD Thesis defence: Javier Burgués
2019-07-09 11:30 - 13:30 | Sala de Graus Eduard Fontseré, Martí i Franquès, 1-11, Barcelona, 08028
“Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Gas Sensors: Gas Source Localization with a Nano-Drone”.
Javier Burgués, Signal and information processing for sensing systems group
Chemical source localization (CSL) by autonomous robots has been a topic of research since the early 1990s and still today remains elusive beyond simple scenarios. It has numerous potential applications, such as the localization of toxic emissions, malodors, gas leaks and hazardous substances in general, without risking human lives. An intuitive CSL approach is to mimic the known chemo-orientation behaviour of some flying insects, such as moths and mosquitos, which effectively use odor plumes for mating and foraging. However, terrestrial robots are too slow to perform insect-like movements and the response time and limit of detection (LOD) of current odor sensors for key compounds of biological relevance for plume navigation is orders of magnitude higher than in biological chemoreceptors. Instead of using a slow terrestrial robot equipped with complex instrumentation, in this thesis we address the CSL problem with a nano-drone, i.e. a miniaturized aerial robot, equipped with a simple metal oxide semiconductor (MOX) sensor. Improving key specifications of MOX sensors for this application is one of the core parts of this thesis. Specifically, we introduce novel signal processing methods for estimating and optimizing the LOD, reducing the power consumption and improving the response time. We propose a univariate LOD optimization method based on linearized calibration models and a multivariate approach based on orthogonal partial least squares (O-PLS). To improve the response time, we use high-frequency features extracted from the MOX signal derivative, which are optimized for changing wind conditions and real-time operation. A novel setup consisting on a 3D grid of MOX sensors is proposed for real-time visualization of the gas distribution. Two map-based CSL strategies are finally evaluated using the nano-drone in experiments performed in a large indoor environment (160 m2) where a chemical source is placed in challenging positions for the drone. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed nano-drone can quickly (< 3 min) build a rough gas distribution map (3D) of the environment and localize the main chemical source within it with small errors.

PhD Thesis defence: Javier Burgués
2019-07-09 11:30 - 13:30 | Sala de Graus Eduard Fontseré, Faculty of Physics, UB, Barcelona, Spain

PhD Thesis Defence: Víctor González Tarragó
2019-07-11 12:00 - 14:00 | Aula 14, Faculty of Medicine (Campus Clínic), Barcelona, Spain
Control of integrin-mediated mechanoresponse by binding partners and force loading rates
Víctor González Tarragó, Cellular and Molecular Mechanobiology group
This thesis is a study on the integrin-mediated mechanoresponse by binding partners and force loading rates. Regarding the binding partners, here we demonstrate an alternative and counter-intuitive mechanism, by which another adaptor protein (ZO-1) promotes activation but decreases mechanical resistance. Because such mechanical regulation is bound to impact in downstream mechanosensing processes, this provides an interesting and novel way to regulate cell adhesion, mechanoresponse, and function in general. Regarding the force loading rates, our results show that force loading rates drive mechanosensing by increasing reinforcement and adhesion growth at the local adhesion level, in a talin-dependent way. However, if mechanically induced deformations are too high or too fast, the cytoskeleton fluidizes, thereby decreasing force loading rates and mechanosensing. This provides a unifying mechanism to understand how cells respond not only to directly applied forces, but also to passive mechanical stimuli such as tissue rigidity or ECM ligand distribution. Further, it also provides a framework to understand how the seemingly opposed concepts of reinforcement and fluidization are coupled to drive mechanosensing.

PhD Thesis Defence: Víctor González Tarragó
2019-07-11 12:00 - 14:00 | Faculty of Medecine
Control of integrin-mediated mechanoresponse by binding partners and force loading rates
Víctor González Tarragó, Cellular and Molecular Mechanobiology group
Víctor González Tarragó will be defending his PhD thesis on Thursday 11th July at 12:00 in the at the Faculty of Medicine (Campus Clínic) aula 14.
Everybody is welcome to attend.
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If you’re an IBEC PhD student and would like to advertise your PhD defence on the IBEC calendar, please contact ibeccommunications@ibecbarcelona.eu

IBEC Seminar: Nicolas Minc
2019-07-15 12:00 - 13:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Division positioning in early embryos from mechanisms to function
Nicolas Minc, Insitut Jacques Monod, Paris, France
Nicolas Minc lab is located at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, and studies general problems of cell morphogenesis, ranging from the control of cell growth and shapes in single cells, to cell division in multicellular embryos. One hallmark of the lab is to combine quantitative imaging, biophysics methods and modelling to address fundamental questions in cell and developmental biology.

2nd IBEC-ICMS Joint Symposium
2019-07-16 09:00 - 18:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
The event is in the framework of an alliance between the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS), a research institute of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

As part of IBEC Strategic Plan 2018-2020, It’s planned that the similarities and complementary aspects of both IBEC and ICMS – their multidisciplinarity, active missions to connect with industry and clinicians, and strong research in nano, materials, molecular devices, supramolecular systems and regenerative medicine – may form the basis of an institutional-level alliance to share people, resources and knowledge.
The event aims to identify synergies and potential for collaboration between IBEC groups and the researchers of ICMS. It is the 2nd edition of a series of joint symposiums that started in Eindhoven on September 2018. During that symposium many natural connections initiated for the benefit of both our organizations. We therefore feel that there are excellent opportunities to further strengthen the ties between our institutes. Therefore, we are organizing a number of scientific exchanges and working on the identification of common research interests.
This second ICMS-IBEC Symposium will be a great opportunity to foster collaborations, strengthen the existing ones, and an opportunity for young researchers involved in the exchange program to present their activities in the partner organization.
If you would like to attend, please go to the symposium website and register (see link below). It is important to register so we can organize the room, poster stands and catering accordingly. It takes only 20 seconds. You can also register even if you do not bring a poster along.
Deadline for registration: 8th July 17h.
WEBSITE: https://events.ibecbarcelona.eu/ibec-icms/

2nd IBEC-ICMS Joint Symposium
2019-07-16 09:00 - 18:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

12th IBEC Symposium: Bioengineering for Active Ageing
2019-07-17 09:00 - 18:00
The IBEC annual symposium brings together high-profile international experts for an open forum for interdisciplinary discussions and networking.
This year the symposium is dedicated to Bioengineering for Active Ageing, one of IBEC’s three major application areas.
This year a special afternoon session has been organized with three keynote speakers coming from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the framework of an ongoing project funded by MIT-SPAIN ”la Caixa” Foundation SEED FUND to foster IBEC-MIT collaborations.
Scientific community is invited to participate. Attendees from IBEC and abroad are welcome to present their research or projects in poster format. Moreover, some of these contributions will be selected by the scientific committee for an oral flash presentation.
Additionally, attendees are invited to present their research in a short video to be uploaded to the IBEC YouTube channel. The most popular video will win a prize at the end of the year.

Important deadlines:
Abstract submission: 16th June
Notification of acceptance: 28th June
Registration deadline: 8th July

Registration and Abstract submission: https://events.ibecbarcelona.eu/symposium2019/
