In Vivo News
On 6 September, IRB Barcelona joined 252 institutions throughout Europe to sign the “Statement supporting European Directive 2010/63/EU”, promoted by the European Animal Research Association to endorse European legislation that protects animals used for scientific purposes. In Spain, the initiative was defended by COSCE, the Confederation of Spanish Science Societies.
Research Associate Ivan del Barco says that the Directive “forces you to really think about your experiment and minimise the use of animals to get your results.”
This year the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese biologist who discovered autophagy—the process used by cells to clean and recycle their components. Group Leader Antonio Zorzano studies autophagy in his research at IRB Barcelona, and explains why it is such a key discovery in an interview published in La Vanguardia.
Back from a very rewarding stay in Yale, Pol already has new ideas in mind to overcome the barrier that protects the brain and makes it so difficult to design drugs to cure neurological diseases.
IRB Barcelona fosters entrepreneurship among its young scientists. Two postdoctoral fellows tell in vivo about their experience of learning how to deal with markets, patents and venture capitalists.
IRB Barcelona and the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Tohoku University in Japan have signed a new academic exchange agreement. In August, the Dean of the Japanese institution and IRB Barcelona Director Joan J. Guinovart endorsed a long-standing collaboration between scientists at the two centres.
Alex and Raquel had a very special idea for their wedding ceremony. “Research can move forward only if we all support it,” they think.
Jordi Gaitan (Blanes, 1970) joined the ranks of the Tandem project, which IRB Barcelona started last year with the Mare de Déu de Montserrat school in Cornellà. This project, implemented with the collaboration of the Catalunya – La Pedrera Foundation, aims to boost academic results in school through science and biomedicine. Jordi’s job is to advise the Tandem team about how to include new teaching techniques when designing the academic curriculum.
Vilchez is the first IRB Barcelona alumnus to receive the “Alumni of Excellence Award”. He obtained his PhD at the Institute in 2008 and now runs his own group at the CECAD-Cluster of Excellence in Cologne, Germany.
Research has always been one of Noemí Carranza's (Valladolid, 1980) passions. She chose to study Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Valladolid in 2004 and moved on to do a PhD at the Polytechnic University and at the CSIC in Madrid.
In September, IRB Barcelona recruited Bibiana Cervelló Jager (Barcelona, 1970) to occupy the newly created post of Head of Legal Services. “I have been here only a few weeks, and there is already a lot of meat to get into in a legal sense. I am looking forward to supporting researchers with all their legal questions,” she tells in vivo.
