Institutional news

This month, Barcelona’s Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) will play host to a former astronaut who was also the first member of his profession to stand on top of Mount Everest.

Tonight at the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) in Barcelona, IBEC group leader Alicia Casals will inaugurate the beginning of their new academic year with a lecture, “Neurorobòtica, el repte de la robòtica assistencial”. The event will take place in the Sala Prat de la Riba and will be chaired by the President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, and the president of IEC, Salvador Giner.

The picture shows IBEC director Josep Planell presenting and chairing a session on New Biomaterials and Design Trends at this week’s Biomaterials Europe Conference and Medevice Spain Exhibition, a new event devoted to innovations in biomaterials and the manufacture of medical devices.

Representatives from IBEC attended Wednesday’s Connect-EU conference at Barcelona’s World Trade Center, which offered a platform for the gathering and exchange of information regarding participation in the 7th Framework Programme for R & D in Europe.

Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutes last year, IBEC will play host to visitors from the University of Warwick on 22-23 September.

Today is the abstract submission deadline for posters for IBEC’s fourth annual symposium on Bioengineering and Nanomedicine, which will be held on 18 October 2011.

A new event devoted to innovations in biomaterials and biomaterials processing will be held in Barcelona in October, with IBEC as sponsoring partner.

The MICINN meeting in Madrid which invited the directors of the Severo Ochoa shortlist was featured on the lunchtime news bulletin Telediario on national TV channel 1 yesterday (pictured) and appeared in several newspapers.

The end of July is the abstract submission deadline for the International Meeting on AFM in Life Sciences and Medicine (AFM BioMed), to be held in Paris on 23-27 August, for which IBEC group leader Daniel Navajas is on the organizing committee.

IBEC’s fourth annual symposium on Bioengineering and Nanomedicine will be held on 18 October 2011, and this year for the first time the proceedings will include a day-long workshop on 19 October, Nanomedicine for healthy ageing, which will be co-organized with Biopol’H.