IBEC in the Media

Today El Mundo features a short article about IBEC’s involvement in the European project Plantoid, which aims aims to design and develop robots inspired by plants.

New IBEC group leader Samuel Sánchez appears in articles in El Mundo and El Periodico today, talking about his career so far, his new appointment at IBEC and the work he will be continuing on micro- and nanomotors.

Last Friday IBEC was featured on TV3’s lunchtime news in a report about Barcelona’s capacity to attract foreign academics and researchers to the city, and the Barcelona Centre Universitari, which helps newcomers with language, administration, networking and legal issues.

Today, La Vanguardia (left) and Interempresas.net report that Rob Surgical Systems, the IBEC/UPC spin-off company, has started validating its Bitrack Surgical Robot System for minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery.

Aiming to address the current shortcomings of laparoscopic surgery, the robot has been designed under the technical direction of Dr. Josep Amat (UPC) and Alicia Casals’ Robotics group (IBEC), with medical direction from Dr. Javier Magriña from Arizona’s Mayo Clinic, an expert in Da Vinci surgical robots.

Pau Gorostiza’s work on optopharmacology, or light-controllable drugs, has appeared in the latest edition of The Scientist magazine in the US.

Samuel Sánchez, who will join IBEC as a new group leader in January 2015, has been awarded the title ‘Innovador del año’ by MIT Technology Review, the best of their 10 selected “Innovadores menores de 35 España 2014”, for his pioneering contributions in the field of micro- and nanomotors, such as self-propelled nanorobots for biosensing applications.

This week, he has featured in articles and interviews by La Vanguardia, El Confidencial, El Mundo, Antena3, RAC1 and more.

Miguel Angel Mateos from the Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies group was interviewed for Televisió L’Hospitalet after his participation in this year’s Setmana de la Ciència, for which he gave a talk entitled “Regeneració de teixits : com nou” at the Centre Cultural Sant Josep on Wednesday.

Josep A. Planell, rector of the UOC and Research Fellow at IBEC, appears in a new documentary about technology transfer in Catalonia, Inversió de Futur.

Presented by Pere Estupinyà, the hour-long documentary, made in by Televisió de Catalunya in collaboration with the CERCA centers, also features other notable names in the Catalan research arena, such as Hble. Sr. Andreu Mas-Colell and director of the PCB Montserrat Vendrell.

An article by Raimon Jané appears in this month’s edition of IEEE Pulse, the magazine of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, which is devoted to the science of sleep.