Institutional news

The 100XCIENCIA “Communicating frontier science” forum took place last week in Santa Cruz de La Palma. IBEC Director Josep Samitier was one of the twenty directors that presented their Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence to the assembled science communicators and journalists, including the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang.

The three-day unprecedented event also included round tables during which the directors, journalists and other professionals including European Commission representatives could discuss topics such as science policy, science in the media, and the impact of outreach activities.

This morning IBEC had the chance to show off its research facilities and investigators to Carmen Vela, Spain’s secretary of state for research, development and innovation.

After inaugurating the IBEC-organized B·Debate on “Future Tools for Biomedical Research” at CosmoCaixa at the beginning of the day, Mrs. Vela was taken on a tour of IBEC’s laboratories, where she chatted with heads of research groups – including Nuria Monserrat, Samuel Sanchez, Elena Martinez, Eli Engel, Lorenzo Albertazzi and Pau Gorostiza – about their work. Afterwards, Mrs. Vela enjoyed morning coffee with IBEC’s directorate and several more group leaders.

Next week will be a full one at IBEC, with several important events on the agenda.

Monday 28th September will see the arrival of Scientific Advisory Board for their annual two-day meeting with IBEC’s directorate. Among other things, the panel of experts from research and industry, who will be coming from as far afield as the USA and Singapore, will be reviewing the international candidates for the group leader and tenure track positions.

On Wednesday 30th September, IBEC’s 8th Annual Symposium will take place at Barcelona’s AXA auditorium.

IBEC group leader and ICREA Research Professor Pau Gorostiza will be taking part in the Barcelona version of European Researcher’s Night this Friday, 25th September.

Held at the CCCB, the Nit Europea de la Recerca Barcelona will be in celebration of the Year of Light. At 20:00 Pau will take part in a round table moderated by BIOCAT on the subject of “Humans amb més llum: re-evolució humana gràcies a les noves tecnologies basades en la llum”.

Yesterday IBEC welcomed some of its partners from HT Cluster, a new alliance of industry, research centres and other bodies working in the health technologies sector in Catalonia, through its doors.

IBEC Director Josep Samitier and researchers Elisabeth Engel, Xavier Puñet, Lucas Pedraz, Agustín Gutiérrez and Mateu Pla gave talks to the visitors, who represented some of the businesses and other organizations that form the cluster. Afterwards, Mateu led a tour of IBEC’s facilities.

This morning, the 15 research projects that have been selected for funding under in the first CaixaImpulse call, including two IBEC projects, were presented at the Palau Macaya.

Xavier Puñet, a PhD student in the Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies group, presented Dermoglass, a dressing that stimulates revascularization in chronic wounds such as skin ulcers and promotes the formation of healthy skin. The other IBEC project selected for funding is RNRbiotics led by Eduard Torrents, group leader of the Bacterial infections: antibiotic therapy group, which aims to develop new antimicrobial agents effective against resistant bacterial infections, currently considered as one of the main threats to human health (World Health Organization).

Dr Lorenzo Albertazzi, a nanoscientist whose research focuses on creating smart self-assembling materials for therapeutic applications, is joining IBEC this September.

Lorenzo, who is coming to Barcelona from Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands, will set up a laboratory at IBEC to create a molecular ‘toolbox’ of supramolecular biomimetic structures – self-organized or assembled synthetic materials able to mimic the complexity of biological machinery – for applications in nanomedicine and biotechnology, such as transporting drugs into the body or attacking viruses.

The latest edition of InsideIBEC, the newsletter of IBEC, is available now.

Inside this issue you’ll find articles about the Severo Ochoa award and other prizes, clinical collaborations, new projects, a roundup of the latest activities and events, HR news, and an overview of IBEC’s major new institutional venture, EIT Health. The newsletter is also a handy guide to upcoming events at the institute, and introduces some of our most recent newcomers.

Yesterday at a ceremony at MINECO in Madrid, IBEC Director Josep Samitier received IBEC’s Severo Ochoa Excellence Award.

Presented to him by Secretary of State Carmen Vela, the prestigious €4m award represents Spain’s recognition of IBEC as an international reference in its field.

The ceremony also awarded the other Severo Ochoa winner in this round, the Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), as well as the winners of the Maria de Maeztu prize, a MINECO award for smaller centres.

IBEC is a key player in a new network of organizations working together to exploit Big Data from life and food sciences

Monday saw the launch of the Associació Bioinformatics Barcelona (BIB), a network of 25 members including universities, research centres, hospitals, major scientific facilities, and pharmaceutical, technology and and bioinformatics companies, which aims to respond to the challenges posed by the growth of big data and position Barcelona as a world leader in bioinformatics.