Institutional news

This week some of IBEC’s Scientific Advisory Board members are visiting to take part in the Fourth International Conference on Multifunctional, Hybrid and Nanomaterials (Hybrid Materials 2015), which is taking part in Sitges until Friday.

Molly Stevens from Imperial College London and Samuel Stupp of Northwestern University, who is president of IBEC’s SAB, will both give featured talks at the international meeting, which attracts 900 participants from over 50 countries for its 306 oral presentations and over 970 poster presentations.

On Tuesday March 10 the official presentation of EIT-Health Spain will be taking place at the PCB.

This local node of EIT-Health, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s “Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC)” for healthy living and active aging, is led by the University of Barcelona coordinated by IBEC Director Josep Samitier, Dr. Jordi Alberch, Vice President for Research, Innovation and Transfer at the UB, and Dr. Montserrat Vendrell, Director General of the PCB and BIOCAT.

The event will be attended by Secretary of State Carmen Vela, as well as other institutional representatives of the ministries involved: the Generalitat de Catalunya, Comunidad de Madrid and the Generalitat Valenciana.

IBEC and Genomica S.A.U. (Grupo Zeltia), the leading Spanish company in molecular diagnostics, announce the creation of a Joint Research Unit that will provide an operational framework for close interaction on various R&D activities related to healthcare.

The unit, which will be located at IBEC’s headquarters in Barcelona, will see researchers and industry technicians sharing a host of know-how and in-house capabilities to develop and bring to market point-of-care diagnostic products and other medical devices and technologies.

Gabriel Gomila, IBEC group leader and Associate Professor at the UB, has received an ICREA Academia Prize 2014 for excellence in research and capacity for leadership.

Bestowed annually by the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) to encourage university professionals with an outstanding research career to stay in the Catalan university system, this year’s list of 30 winners is made up of 10 researchers from the UB, 8 from the UAB, 6 from the UPC, 3 from the UPF, 2 from Universitat de Girona and one from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Last week, IBEC Director Josep Samitier was named new president of the Associació Catalana d’Entitats de Recerca (ACER).

Josep takes the reins from IFCO director Lluís Torner, who has held the position since 2009. The association’s first President was the Hon. Mr. Andreu Mas-Colell. The other members of the Director’s Board are ICAC’s Joan Gómez Pallarès (Secretary), Ramon Gomis (IDIBAPS), Jordi Galí (CREI) and Josep M. Monfort (IRTA) as members.

One of the world’s top researchers – and a record-breaker – in the field of nano- and microrobots is coming to Barcelona to continue his career.

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) welcomes Dr. Samuel Sánchez (Terrassa, 1980), who is taking up a new Group Leader position there this month. He’ll be continuing his work on tiny self-propelling machines that not so long ago were still only fantasy – such as the miniature submarine Proteus, injected into a scientist’s bloodstream in the film Fantastic Voyage – and which are now becoming very much a reality.

IBEC is a core partner in the winning proposal for the EIT’s Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) on healthy living and active ageing.

InnoLife, a consortium of 144 European companies, research institutes and universities – including IBEC – has been selected by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) for EIT Health.

Xavier Serra Picamal, formerly a PhD student in IBEC’s Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics group, was awarded a prestigious Ramon Margalef Prize for the best paper derived from a doctoral thesis at a ceremony at the UB last night.

Xavier received the prize for a 2012 Nature Physics paper, “Mechanical Waves during tissue expansion”, which describes a new type of mechanical waves in living matter.