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IBEC is a partner in four out of five 2018 BIST Ignite Grants awarded to multidisciplinary research projects

Four projects coordinated by 2 group leaders and 2 researchers from IBEC have been successful in gaining funding through the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology’s IGNITE call.

The BIST Ignite Programme is a mechanism to foster multidisciplinary research among the BIST members. Its goal is to promote new collaboration between its partners, facilitating the exchange of knowledge among different scientific fields and exploring new approaches. The projects that can be eligible for the grants must pursue the exploration of new questions and technological challenges through novel multidisciplinary approaches. The selected projects are granted with 20.000€ each and researchers will have 8 months to develop their projects.

The second edition of IBEC’s Faster Future programme will be dedicated to the fight against Parkinson

The programme IBEC Faster Future, an initiative that aims to help accelerate research projects that are close to tackling major challenges in health, will enable the development of a new antibody that will be the base of a therapeutic product for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

The Faster Future program campaign “Let’s tackle Parkinson”, which is launched today and will remain open to donations until the 30th of April, has the aim to raise 50,000 € needed to accelerate this research, seeking to obtain favourable results within a year and a half.

12th Annual Conference of Biomedical Research Technology Platforms

The Spanish Platform for Nanomedicine (NanoMedSpain) coordinated by Josep Samitier, director of IBEC, has participated once again in the Annual Conference of Technological Platforms of Biomedical Research that took place in Madrid during the days 5 an 6 of March.

This yearly conference, organised by the four national platforms Farmaindustria, Asebio, NanomedSpain and FENIN -Innovative medicines, nanomedicine, sanitary technology and biotechnological markets- where the main issue was how to boost biomedical research hubs in Spain. During the morning of the 5th of March, the directors of each platform presented a summary of their activity during 2018, after which their invited speakers gave talks. This year, NanomedSpain has invited Per Matsson, president of EIT Health Scandinavia and CTO at Thermo Fisher Scientific Immunodiagnostics whose speech was entitled “Innovation in health: from biomarker discovery to implementation”.

Pere Roca winner of EBSA Young Investigator’s Prize

Pere Roca-Cusachs, group leader at IBEC and assistant professor at the University of Barcelona, has won the 2019 Young Investigator Prize for his contributions to the field of mechanobiology. The award is given by the European Biophysical Societies Association (EBSA).

EBSA association grants this prize every two years. The last winner of the prize was Philipp Kukura from the University of Oxford in the UK in 2017. The prize recognises an investigator who has defended his thesis 12 years ago or less across Europe and awards him with 2000€ and a medal as well as be expected to contribute an article to the European Biophysics Journal.

Mechanobiology of Cancer Summer School 2019

The MECHANO·CONTROL consortium, led by several research institutions across Europe, is launching a Summer School that will be taking place between 17-20 of September 2019 at the Eco Resort in La Cerdanya. The aim of the summer school is to provide training on mechanobiology, and specifically its application to breast cancer.

This school will include lectures as well as practical workshops in different techniques and disciplines, ranging from modelling to biomechanics to cancer biology. There will be scientific sessions in the morning, mixing 6 keynote speakers with 18 short talks selected from abstract submissions by junior scientists attending the school. In the afternoon, there will be 2-3-hour practical workshops, given by scientists from the MECHANO·CONTROL consortium. The course will also include leisure activities.

IBEC signs an agreement for 1.5 million euros with Scranton Enterprises

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has signed an agreement for an initial investment round of one and a half million euros with Scranton Entreprises B.V. -an investment association headquartered in the Netherlands-, with the aim of developing technology that predicts the probability of implantation of embryos obtained through in vitro fertilization.

This agreement is the first to be established within the framework of the institute’s new initiative, the Open Innovation Lab, that offers companies and investors a platform to bring the cutting-edge research to patients and to the market faster.

IBEC brings together two Nobel prizes on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The Instiute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has brought together in the same act the American physicist Jerome Friedman, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990, and the Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009.

Both researchers, who are in Barcelona for the biennial “Ciutat i Ciència” organized by Institut de Cultura de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona, have coincided in this event on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Another successful edition of Health TECH World Cancer Day

Last Friday the IBEC-managed Spanish Nanomedicine Platform, NanoMed Spain, co-hosted the sixth edition of Health TECH World Cancer Day, a global initiative organized as part of World Cancer Day.

It’s the fourth year running that the platform has hosted the conference, which took place at the headquarters of the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC) in Barcelona and was opened by Laureano Molins, president de AECC Cataluña and IBEC/NanoMed Spain’s Josep Samitier, who also gave a presentation about the platform.

IBEC joins the Magnet program for the educational innovation

This past Tuesday 22 of January took place the first meeting among the cloister of the school Gayare de Sants with the scientists and IBEC staff in the framework of the Magnet program. It was an interactive and practical day attended by 20 teachers from the centre.

“Magnet, alliances for educational success” is a program that unites educational centres that have an unbalanced social composition with an institution of excellence for 4 years. This union will allow the educational centre to develop an innovative project that will become a reference project in its territory.

IBEC participates in the First Biennial Ciutat-Ciència 2019

IBEC is a driving force behind a major science festival that will be taking place across the city this year. The event was presented yesterday at a press conference held at the Amfiteatre Anatòmic de la Reial Acadèmia de Medicina and it is organized by the Ajuntament de Barcelona along with other top research centers.

An initiative promoted by the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB), Ciutat-Ciència is being planned by a committee of seven reseachers, including IBEC’s group leader Nuria Monstserrat.

With a week of concentrated activity from 7th-11th February, Ciutat-Ciència will present today’s rapidly accelerating scientific advances to citizens and encourage debate and opinion.