6th IRB Barcelona PhD Students’ Retreat

After earning her PhD in Genetics at the University of Barcelona (UB) and completing postdoctoral research at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, Gemma was appointed Full Professor of Genetics at UB in 2020. Currently, she leads the Human Molecular Genetics Research Group in the Faculty of Biology of University of Barcelona and the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB). She is also part of the Biomedical Network Research Centre for Rare Diseases (CIBERER). Her research focuses on the molecular genetics of inherited rare diseases causing blindness, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa. To translate her lab's discoveries into clinical diagnostics, she co-founded the university spin-off DBGen Ocular Genomics in 2018.

Alongside her biomedical research, she is a member of UB's Observatory of Bioethics and Law and has served as an advisor on several national bioethics committees. Moreover, Dr. Marfany is deeply committed to public science outreach, frequently engaging with media, writing newspaper articles, and giving public lectures.

Prof. Dr. Telmo Pievani is a philosopher of biology and Full Professor at the University of Milan. His work spans evolutionary theory, human diversity and the role of contingency in the history of life and of science. Alongside his research, he is a prominent science communicator and the author of many popular books, including “Imperfection. A Natural History” and “Serendipity: The Unexpected in Science"

In 2018, Sergio earned his PhD in Neuroscience at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante. From 2019 to 2023, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the Frederic Geissmann’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Then, he moved to Barcelona to complete a second postdoc at IRB Barcelona in the Development and Growth Control Laboratory under the supervisión of Dr. Marco Milán. 
Since September 2025, he has been a Junior Group Leader at the CABD, leading a research line on the macrophage axis in inter-organ physiology. His laboratory views macrophages beyond their traditional role in the immune response, studying them as core information nodes that detect environmental cues and integrate inter-organ communication to regulate homeostasis.
 

Dr. Mireia Valles-Colomer is a tenure-track group leader at the MELIS Department of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where she leads the Microbiome Research Group. Her research explores the role of the human microbiome in mental health and its transmission between people. With a background in biotechnology and biomolecular sciences, she completed her PhD at VIB-KU Leuven and an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Trento. Her work has contributed to key advances in understanding the microbiome–gut–brain axis and the person-to-person transmission of human-associated microorganisms.

Dr. Paweł Mikulski received his Msc degree from the University of Warsaw and the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Afterwards, he did his PhD thesis in the consortium of M. Skłodowska-Curie ‘EpiTraits’, conducting research in 6 European institutions, e.g. Henrich Heine University Duesseldorf, University of Amsterdam, company Diagenode S.A. He completed post-doctoral stays in UK, in the groups of Prof. Dame Caroline Dean (John Innes Centre) and Prof. Lars Jansen (University of Oxford). He has been investigating epigenetic and chromatin mechanisms in the past 12 years. In his works, he showed a new link between subnuclear periphery and chromatin repression pathway, functional association of the RNA processing machinery with chromatin regulators, the structure of long non-coding RNAs and regulators of epigenetic transcriptional memory. Since 2025 Dr. Mikulski is Group leader of the Laboratory of Immunological Epigenetics at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw, Poland.