Institutional news

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.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Interpretation group leader and UPC professor Raimon Jané has been appointed as a member of the new CIBER-BBN Steering Committee.

CIBER-BBN’s Permanent Commission announced the names of the 10-strong committee, which will stand for the next four years, on Wednesday.

Raimon, who will take part in the committee as Training Coordinator, will carry out his duties alongside other researchers including Ramón Martínez-Máñez (Universitat Politècnica de València) as director and José Becerra (Universidad de Málaga) as subdirector.

IBEC group leader and ICREA research professor Xavier Trepat is this year’s winner of the Banc Sabadell Award for Biomedical Research for his work on understanding the fundamental biophysical mechanisms underlying cell interaction and communication.

The news was made public today at a press lunch (left) attended by the President and Vice President of the Fundació Banc Sabadell, Miquel Molins and Sònia Mulero, as well as jury members Jordi Camí (UPF), Isabel Illa (UAB) and Eduard Batlle (ICREA/IRB).

Next week, top scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU), including Israel’s former Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Science and Technology, are visiting Barcelona to take part in a joint symposium with IBEC.

With many similarities between Catalonia and Israel – which are almost neck-and-neck when it comes to research output in Science and Nature, with over 30 publications per million inhabitants and similar levels of funding under FP7 – this event builds on the fact-finding mission of Artur Mas and Barcelona-based scientists to Israel last year and is supported by AGAUR.

The 6th European CellMech Meeting, which is being hosted by IBEC, started this morning at the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Medicine.

IBEC group leaders Daniel Navajas, Xavier Trepat and Pere Roca-Cusachs are the organising committee of this year’s CellMech, one of the premier worldwide meetings in cell mechanobiology. The conference, which goes on until Friday, focuses in particular on the integration of mechanical processes across scales, from subcellular components to tissues.

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia is one of the two centres in Spain to be awarded accreditation in this round of the Severo Ochoa Excellence programme.

The Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness announced the provisional winners of the coveted distinction, selected by an international panel of more than 70 judges, this morning. Severo Ochoa Excellence Awards identify and promote research centres and units in Spain that stand out as international references in their specialized fields.
 
 

IBEC has been awarded the ‘Human Resources Excellence in Research’ from the European Commission, in recognition of its commitment to continuously improving its HR policies in line with The European Charter of Researchers and The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers (Charter and Code).

IBEC can now use the official HR Excellence in Research logo to help promote itself as a provider of a stimulating and favourable work environment according to the Charter and Code, which describe the rights and responsibilities of researchers and their employers and contribute to the creation of a labour market that is transparent, attractive and open at an international level.