Institutional news

On Monday IBEC Managing Director David Badia (left), on behalf of IBEC’s employees, presented the €665 raised by the institute at last December’s Christmas Celebration to the Arrels Fundació, a charity for the homeless in Barcelona’s Raval district.

Arrels director Ferran Busquets (right) was delighted to receive the funds, which were raised by generous IBECers who bought tickets for the tombola on 17th December. The money will go towards helping the 400 Arrels volunteers reach out to more than 1600 homeless people per year with support by way of clothing, medicine, psychological aid and accommodation.
“It was good to get to know more about the role of Arrels Fundació as an NGO in our city, and it also offered a chance for us to explain what IBEC is about,” commented David, who visited the foundation with Events Coordinator Pilar Jiménez.

The General Assembly of HealthTech Cluster, a consortium of companies, hospitals and research centres, including IBEC, took place at the UPC’s Campus Nord yesterday.

The meeting approved HealthTech Cluster’s strategic plan for 2016, with some of the main working groups focused on will be innovation, internationalisation and networking. The programme of presentations included IBEC Associated Researcher Alicia Casals, who gave a talk entitled “Robòtica Intel·ligent i Sistemes Assistencials“, and there was also a visit to her laboratory afterwards.

HealthTech Cluster was launched in July 2014 by ACCIO to promote the competitiveness of health technologies in Catalonia.

On Wednesday evening IBEC Director Josep Samitier will be a speaker at a free public lecture organised by the Secció de Ciència i Tecnologia de l’Ateneu Barcelonès as part of the association’s “+Humans: el futur de la nostra espècie” cycle.

In “Envelliment humà, on estan els límits?” Josep and another expert, Dr. Joan Guàrdia of the Institut de Recerca Cervell, Cognició i Conducta (IR3C) and psychology professor at the University de Barcelona, will share their views on human ageing, specificially the morphological and physiological changes that appear as a result of the action of time on human beings. The public event will will take place at the Sala Verdaguer of the Ateneu Barcelonès on Wednesday 10th February at 19:00.

IBEC group leader and ICREA research professor Xavier Trepat is one of the eight candidates nominated for this year’s edition of the La Vanguardia Science Award.

For four weeks, La Vanguardia readers are invited to vote for the Spanish scientist or scientists they think have done the most important research in the past year.
The eight finalists selected by the Scientific Advisory Committee of the prize, which is organised by Grupo Godó and the Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation, have been selected according to their scientific excellence, with the only proviso being that they are all affiliated to a Spanish organisation.

The IBEC-managed Spanish Nanotechnology Platform, NanoMed Spain, will be co-hosting an event as part of Nano World Cancer Day 2016 on Tuesday 2nd February, a global initiative organized for World Cancer Day.

At the conference, which will take place from 11:00-13:00 in the Aula Magna of the University of Barcelona, the latest innovations in nanomedicine for cancer will be presented and discussed, with topics ranging from early diagnosis and the controlled release of drugs to radiation therapy using nanoparticles.

IBEC Director Josep Samitier has been elected as fellow of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

An institution with much influence in society, IEC promotes and develops research and study into all elements of Catalan culture, and is best known for its work in standardizing the Catalan language. It was founded in 1907 by Enric Prat de la Riba, then president of Barcelona County Council who would go on to be the first president of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya, and its members have included the likes of August Pi i Sunyer, Àngel Guimerà and Pompeu Fabra. IEC has been a member of the International Union of Academies since 1922.

IBEC group leader and ICREA research professor Samuel Sánchez is to receive an ERC Proof of Concept grant to explore the innovation potential of some of his research.

His project “Active microcleaners for water remediation” (Microcleaners) will tackle the huge rise in pollutants in water that has been the result of the massive growth in industrial, domestic and agricultural activities.

The tiny Microcleaners – based on the same technology Samuel uses for his self-propelled nanorobots that are designed for applications in nanomedicine, such as drug delivery – are active self-mixing and multifunctional systems capable of cleaning chemical and biological pollutants.

“NanoChristmas trees with lipoballs” (left) by Xavier Fernández Busquets and Marc Cirera was the winning image in the PCB’s first Instagram photo competition ‘Un dia al PCB’ at the end of December.

The Nanomalaria joint unit’s winning submission is a cryo-transmission electron microscope image of liposomes being assayed for the encapsulation of drugs specifically targeted to red blood cells infected by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The competition, which was open to the more than 2000 people who make up the PCB community, aimed to create a mosaic of image for Instagram that depicts a snapshot of life at the park on a typical day.

The life and career of IBEC Director Josep Samitier is one of the “28 Historias de Ciencia e Innovación Biomédica en España/28 Stories of Science and Biomedical Innovation in Spain” in a book launched yesterday by the Fundación Botin in Madrid.

The book celebrates the foundation’s ten years of close collaboration with some of the top scientists in Spain in the field of biomedicine under its Technology Transfer programme, working together to develop products or services that improve quality of life and provide business and investment opportunities. IBEC’s partnership with the foundation has been in regard to the technology transfer of results obtained by the Nanobioengineering group within the project ‘Desarrollo de Tecnologías en Bionanomedicina para diagnóstico y terapia’.