Institutional news

Ben Feringa (left), Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner in 2016, will be one of the speakers at the second International Symposium on Photopharmacology (ISPP2018) on 1st-2nd November.

Co-organised by IBEC, UVic-UCC and IQAC-CISC, the symposium will take place in the Torre dels Frares building at the UVic and will be attended by more than 120 people, the vast majority of whom will be coming from countries other than Spain.

Introducing a drug into the human body that remains inactive inside it and only acts when, where and how we tell it to will be possible within a few years with the application of photopharmacology, a new branch of science that uses light to control the activity of medication.

Last week IBEC attended the third edition of “IN(3D)USTRY: From Needs to Solutions”, the international meeting devoted to 3D printing.

The institute had a stand in the exhibition area, where Head of Technology Transfer Xavier Rubies and Technology Transfer manager Xavier Puñet welcomed visitors interested in finding out more about IBEC’s 3D bioprinting capabilities.

The Generalitat de Catalunya’s Minister of Enterprise and Knowledge, Àngels Chacón (right), was interested to hear about IBEC’s medical solutions using 3D bioprinting for bone, cartilage, skin, diagnostic, cardiology and muscle.

On Friday 19th October, an event to round off the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera’s ‘Bojos per la ciència’ (‘Crazy for Science’) initiative took place at IBEC.

This year was the first year that IBEC took part in the ‘Bojos’ initiative, with a course devoted to bioengineering. 25 students have been coming to IBEC on eighteen Saturdays between January and October to attend in theoretical and practical sessions about the main areas of research in bioengineering applied to health: controlled drug release, biomaterials, regenerative therapies and the medicine of the future, among other topics. In addition, the students participated in complementary workshops where they looked at ethical questions and scientific communication, as well as getting hands-on experience of the research laboratory environment.

Last week IBEC’s PhD students headed off to Mas Colltort in Sant Feliu de Pallarols for the first ever IBEC PhD retreat.

The two-day sojourn in the country was a chance for more than 50 of IBEC’s students to hear talks by various speakers, give flash presentations about their career paths, and get to know one another.

Yesterday’s 11th IBEC Symposium closed with the bestowing of IBEC Doctoral Certificates of Excellence on two PhD fellows, the first time the recognition has been awarded since the initiative’s inception in 2017.

Maria Valls from the Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering group and Berta Gumi from Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches were the students who achieved the certificates, which are in recognition of outstanding performance during the PhD at IBEC.

Tueday 2nd October will see the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia’s 11th Annual Symposium take place at Barcelona’s AXA Auditoritum, the first symposium in the insitute’s second decade of activity.

Focusing this year on the topic of Bioengineering for Regenerative Therapies – one of IBEC’s three areas of application, with its expertise in 3D bioprinting, biomaterials, nanomedicine, stem cells and biomechanics – the symposium will welcome expert speakers in tissue engineering and regeneration from all over the world.

Artist Miguel Bustos was a finalist in a prestigious illustration prize for his work last year on IBEC’s Anniversary Book, ’10 anys d’impacte’.

The 16th edition of the Premis Junceda of the Associació Professional d’il·lustradors de Catalunya saw Miguel up against four other finalists for a prize in the ‘non-fiction book for adults or children’ section. The jury of illustrators is made up of winners of previous calls and personalities from the world of visual communication.

A University of Barcelona master programme in which IBEC participates has been awarded the EIT Label, a certificate of quality for master and doctoral programmes, from EIT Health.

The Master of Technological Innovation in Health (MTIH), led by Sorbonne University, has achieved the EIT Label for its excellent scientific education coupled with innovation and entrepreneurship training. IBEC’s role in the degree programme includes the active participation of students, as well as the innovative technology for health being developed by IBEC’s researchers, many of whom teach on the programme.

Implemented by a consortium of five universities in France, Spain and Portugal, the MTIH provides ‘active learning’ methods and supports student mobility, and new teaching content is being added to strengthen students’ innovation and entrepreneurship expertise.

Eight IBECers were in the Netherlands on 13th and 14th September for the first ever IBEC-ICMS Symposium, ‘NanoSens&Med’.

The event aimed to identify synergies and potential for collaboration between IBEC groups and the researchers of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS), a research institute of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

Two IBEC group leaders, Vito Conte and Lorenzo Albertazzi, already have dual appointments with ICMS. They opened the symposium by welcoming all participants from the two institutions and presented their research, as did Eduard Torrents, Elena Martinez, Silvia Muro, Nuria Montserrat, Samuel Sanchez and director Josep Samitier, who also introduced IBEC.