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This is an online publication of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). Please, visit our webpage at www.irbbarcelona.org
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October 2009 | Issue 08October 2009 | Issue 08
03 04 05 07When hard work doesn’t go unnoticed
Merging two worlds with words
A new look for research records
From the lab to the market
NEWSLETTER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN BIOMEDICINE
in vivoMix and match at the IRB Barcelona retreat
More than 100 IRB Barcelona researchers convened at a hillside resort to the north of Barcelona on October 1-2 to get down to science. The occasion? The 2009 IRB Bar-celona scientific retreat.
Page 03
Following footsteps
Becoming a PhD student is a daunting pros-pect. You may not know much about your new institute, your host lab or the city you have moved to. To tackle this, IRB Barcelona has launched another timely initiative this September, the Footsteps Programme.
Page 02
Class of 2009 hit the ground running
The 25 PhD students of the class of 2009 barely had time to let the dust settle after their arrival at IRB Bar-celona this fall. An agenda chock full of activities awaited them.
Page 02
Faces to Names
A conversation with IRB Barcelona prin-cipal investigator Manuel Palacín about his research work on amino acid transporters and rare diseases.
Page 06
TV stars for a day
IRB Barcelona researchers Jordi Casanova and Cayetano González got involved with the media in September and participated in a TV news report devoted to the fruit fly.
Page 04
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
02
get a more in-depth look at some of the re-
search lines being studied at the Institute.
It wasn’t long before the next event
was due – on September 17, the first in the
new PhD student seminar series took place.
Valerie Crowley presented her work on
transcriptional regulation of Plasmodium
falciparum genes in erythrocyte invasion.
Her seminar was followed by the monthly
‘cool-off session’, which provided an op-
portunity for students and postdocs to
meet, chat and relax over drinks and snacks.
Then it was time for the IRB Barcelona
The 25 PhD students of the class of 2009
barely had time to let the dust settle
after their arrival at IRB Barcelona this fall.
No soon had they unpacked their suitcases,
were they whisked away into the world of
the International PhD Programme where
an agenda chock full of activities
awaited them.
To kick things off, the stu-
dents gathered from September
7-14 for a week-long general
introductory PhD course where
they learned the ins and outs of
IRB Barcelona research and ser-
vices. Director Joan J Guinovart
imparted his customary call-to-
arms urging the students to take
advantage of all that the Institute has to of-
fer during the next four years of their ca-
reers to develop their technical skills, form
networks with researchers from across and
beyond the lab and do some great science.
Once the course had finished, students
split up and headed off for lab rotations to
Class of 2009 PhD students hit the ground running
scientific retreat on October 1-2 to which
all new PhD students were invited to hear
in-depth presentations from the Institute’s
group leaders and core facility heads (see
article on page 3). Then it was back to the
lab to get some work done, with a short
break on October 8 for the of-
ficial IRB Barcelona Welcome
Party.
Next up? The First IRB Bar-
celona PhD Student Symposium:
‘The Architecture of Life’, which
will be held on November 2-3 at
Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa mu-
seum. The event is a student-run
affair that will bring together
eight internationally renowned
speakers with PhD students and other re-
searchers from around the world for pre-
sentations and debate about research into
how life is built, focusing on topics rang-
ing from DNA, RNA and proteins, all the
way up to tissues and organisms, in nor-
mal and diseased states.
Core Facility manager Marta Vilaseca (left) walks the new PhD students through the basics of mass spectrometry. Photo: IRB Barcelona
Becoming a PhD student is a daunting
prospect. You may not know much
about your new institute, your host lab or
the city you have moved to. To tackle this,
IRB Barcelona has launched another timely
initiative this September, the Footsteps Pro-
gramme.
The programme provides newcomers
with a ‘guide’ to help them along at the begin-
ning of their PhD studies. Guides are older
PhD students from a different programme to
that of the newcomer, and give the new stu-
dents an inside perspective of IRB Barcelona,
including the ins and outs of every day life
and the who is who in the organization. PhD
Following footsteps
student Amelie Stein, who has volunteered
to be a guide, explains that it’s not just about
the Institute but also “getting answers about
what to find and where, like a flat, groceries,
a nice bar or shoes, and how things usually
work, like matriculation at the university,
student seminars and cool-off sessions.” She
says that guides benefit by getting to know a
person in a different field and learning about
their research. “It’s also an opportunity to
make a new friend.”
Clara Caminal, Academic Officer at
IRB Barcelona, says that in order to ensure
a good match between guides and students,
next year participants in the Footsteps Pro-
gramme will be paired on the basis of inter-
ests and hobbies.
Tanya Yates
IRB Barcelona PhD students Amelie Stein and Roland Pache work in the Structural Bioinfor-matics Group.
Photo: M
aj Britt H
ansen
03
Several IRB Barcelona PhD students put
aside their research duties for a few hours
this summer to attend the certificate award
ceremony of the 2008-2009 ”la Caixa”/IRB
Barcelona International PhD Programme.
After the ten IRB Barcelona PhD stu-
dents leapt on stage to collect their certifi-
cate, Francisco Barriga put his communica-
When hard work doesn’t go unnoticed
tion skills to work and
spoke on behalf of the
students to express their
gratitude and commit-
ment. “We assure you
that we will not take this
scholarship for granted
and will work as much
as needed to answer the
questions society asks,”
said Barriga in front of a
crowded audience.
The ceremony, held on July 20 at the
CaixaForum cultural center in Barcelona,
was attended by the Spanish Minister of Sci-
ence and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia,
the president of ”la Caixa”, Juan María Nin,
and the directors and awardees of the four re-
search centers in Spain that were chosen by
the financial entity last year to receive ongo-
If any of the more than 100 IRB Barce-lona researchers wasn’t sure why he or
she had been convened to a hillside resort to the north of Barcelona on October 1-2, IRB Barcelona Director Joan Guinovart cleared up any doubt: “We’re here to talk, we’re here to listen, we’re hear to meet and we’re here to get down to science!” The occasion? The 2009 IRB Barcelona scientific retreat.
Mixing and matching (and fostering collaboration) was the order of the day. This year’s sessions were framed around current topics in biomedical research, rather than ordered by research programme, and fo-cused on ‘Multidisciplinary Approaches to Cancer Research’, ‘Search for New Drugs’, ‘DNA and Chromatin’, ‘Protein Folding and Disease’ and ‘Signal Transduction and Cell-Cell Communication’. Each session involved short talks by group leaders from each of the research programmes, and provided a great
Mix and match at the 2009 IRB Barcelona retreat
by a postdoc from each lab. The 100+ partici-pants from a wide range of backgrounds and with diverse scientific interests made for live-ly discussions and interesting exchange. And in the spirit of fostering interaction, sticking close to your chums was strictly prohibited. “If you are a biologist and you are sitting next to another biologist at dinner, you are doing it wrong,” warned Guinovart. “Sit next to a chemist!”
His words did not fall on deaf ears. “I’m a chemist,” says Nuria Aiguabella, a PhD student working with Antoni Riera, “and I don’t know the first thing about biology or oncology. It was great to be able to go to the retreat and hear about the other research projects going on at the Institute. You never know when something you hear may come in handy and give you a good idea.”
Minister Garmendia (left) shakes hands with Eva Novoa, one of the re-cipients of the 2008-2009 ”la Caixa”/IRB Barcelona International PhD Programme call. In the background, PhD students Milica Pavlovic (left) and Felipe Slebe wait their turn.
Photo: IR
B B
arcelona
ing funding to recruit talented PhD students.
The new generations of young research-
ers who are recruited each year through the
”la Caixa”/IRB Barcelona International PhD
Programme spend up to four years in IRB
Barcelona laboratories doing work toward
their theses. The Institute has put in place all
the necessary resources to ensure students
receive close mentoring and have access to a
wide variety of training activities and services
during their doctoral stay.
This year’s ”la Caixa”/IRB Barcelona
International PhD Programme call attracted
nearly 300 applicants from around the world.
The PhD students who made it through the
selection process earlier this year started to
work at IRB Barcelona laboratories in Sep-
tember. The month also saw the opening of
the 2010 call, which will close in January
next year.
opportunity to catch a glimpse of the mul-tidisciplinary research going on at the Insti-tute. The programme was rounded out by an introduction to the newly created Depart-ment of Innovation and Strategic Projects, given by Jorge Domínguez.
This year’s edition also saw expanded participation. IRB Barcelona’s 28 group lead-ers and 6 core facility managers were joined by the newly-arrived PhD students as well as
IRB Barcelona researchers during one of the retreat sessions at the hillside resort.
Sarah Sherwood
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
TV stars for a day
About 75% of known human disease genes have an identifiable match in the ge-nome of fruit flies. Drosophila is being used as a genetic model to investigate several hu-man diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheim-er’s. The fruit fly is also a good model to study the mechanisms underlying aging, im-munity, drug addiction, diabetes and cancer.
Fighting cancer with the fruit fly
The potential of Drosophila in biomedical re-search was also the focus of the last Barcelona BioMed Conference, held on September 14-16 and organized by IRB Barcelona with the support of the BBVA Foundation. ‘Modelling
Cancer in Drosophila’ brought to the Insti-tut d’Estudis Cata-lans over 150 scien-tists from around the world to discuss the cutting-edge models of tumorigenesis in fruit flies and their use in high-throughput screenings of small molecule inhibitors that can be developed to fight human cancer.
“The fruit fly as a model system may be limited in terms of being able to directly lead to a cure for cancer, but sometimes it’s the only organism available to do preliminary experiments aimed to later develop therapies in humans,” says González, conference co-organizer.
The thirty-four works presented dur-ing the conference highlighted the immense variety of studies on cancer and metastasis that are currently being performed, using Drosophila as a model system, in top-class research centres around the world.
Sònia Armengou
Scientists have been using the fruit fly for biomedical research for almost a century.
They know very well that these tiny animals are contributing to the discovery of genes, proteins and fundamental cell and molecu-lar processes that work in very similar ways in humans. Now, thanks to a news report devoted to the fruit fly, broadcast this Sep-tember on the Catalan TV channel TV3, the general public is also aware of the value of Drosophila melanogaster for medicine.
The video, ‘Flies for medicine,’ was ex-clusively recorded at IRB Barcelona and featured principal investigators in the Cell and Developmental Biology Programme Jordi Casanova and Cayetano González, who managed to translate the scientific lan-guage into plain words to explain why this tiny insect is important for research in bio-medicine. IRB Barcelona postdoctoral fel-low Sophia Araújo, and Ainoa Olza, from the Drosophila Injection Service, also con-tributed to the recording by walking jour-nalists through the process of working with the fruit fly.
Merging two worlds with words
Photo: ©
TV
3
González (right) and Araújo during the filming session at IRB Barcelona.
“Researchers are always being evalu-
ated. They have to constantly jus-
tify their work, strive to defend their ideas,
and convince funders that their proposals for
research projects are worthier
than those of their competi-
tors,” says IRB Barcelona Di-
rector Joan J Guinovart. These
general thoughts and many
other perspectives on the
world of science were recently
captured in a profile interview
filmed at IRB Barcelona.
The video was released in
September on ‘Global Talent,’ a new online
communications platform that aims to con-
nect the world of science with society through
the publication of research news, interviews,
Photo: ©
Global Talent
The research carried out in Guinovart’s lab focuses on glycogen metabolism and its dysfunctions in diabetes and Lafora disease.
opinion articles, debates, expert profiles, com-
puter graphics, photo galleries and blogs.
An initiative of the Catalan Foundation
for Research and Innovation (FCRI), the
channel presents the latest research break-
throughs in an easy-to-understand way to
help the general audience to quickly grasp the
relevance of these discoveries and get a global
picture of the science carried out in Spain.
‘Global Talent’, led by journalist Xavi-
er Pujol, is supported by the Department
of Innovation, Universities and Business
of the Catalan government. More info at
www.globaltalentfcri.com.
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
05
The month of October has brought sim-
plicity and speed into purchasing rou-
tines at IRB Barcelona. After five months of
tests and tweaking, the Institute has put in
place a new online platform with the latest
functionalities to make the purchasing pro-
cess much easier and quicker for researchers.
“The system allows you to place orders in
a matter of seconds,” says Yolanda Olmos,
head of the IRB Barcelona purchasing de-
partment.
Designed by the consulting firm everis,
some of the new features of the purchasing
portal include immediate tracking of orders,
budget control, best price available for each
of the purchases, automatic invoice valida-
tion and approval, purchasing history reports
and the possibility to run queries about past
orders. The system has been tested in both
Windows and Mac platforms and will be up
and running the second week of October.
Buying time with the purchasing platform
At first it will be available to a few users and
gradually opened to the whole community
after the initial tests are validated.
The purchasing department at IRB Barce-
lona processes nearly 10,000 annual purchas-
es, a number that keeps growing every year.
(From left to right) Noèlia Camacho, Cristina Lacasa and Nerea Peiró during the purchasing training course held in September.
Moved by an interest to get a closer
look at the world of research, a del-
egation of politicians from the Catalan Par-
liament put aside its regular duties on Sep-
tember 16 to spend one day at the Barcelona
Science Park (PCB). The reason? To learn
about the latest scientific activities carried
out by research centers and biotechnology
Science and politics hook up
companies hosted at the
PCB, and bring home-
work back to the Parlia-
ment to promote new
joint initiatives for the up-
coming years.
Two hours of presen-
tations were followed by
a tour of the PCB, which
started with a guided visit
of the IRB Barcelona laboratory led by prin-
cipal investigator Antonio Zorzano.
The visit was part of the ‘Enterprises-
Parlamientarians’ programme, an initiative
of the Catalan government and the private
foundation FemCAT which aims to promote
the dialog between Catalan deputies and re-
search centers in Catalonia.
A new look for research records
T he primary records of research at IRB Barcelona have had a
facelift in October. The Institute has released an official edition of laboratory notebooks to enhance the process of documenting experi-ments. “The notebooks are specially designed to improve good labora-tory practices and safeguard the in-tellectual property generated from the Institute’s research results,” says Jorge Domínguez, head of the Innovation and Strategic Projects Department.
The new edition of the labora-tory notebooks includes a revised set of practical guidelines that all researchers are required to follow in order to ensure good record-keeping and facilitate invention disclosures. Among these are the possibility of having a third party signature when the experiments can lead to patent applications, and the implementa-tion of a new notebook tracking and bookkeeping system.
The notebooks will be first test-ed with a limited number of users and will progressively be distribut-ed to the whole IRB Barcelona com-munity, once the initial feedback is collected.
Photo: A
. Alsina
The delegation of parliamentarians included representative deputees from all the Catalan parties. Photo: © R. Boadella
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
06
FACES TO NAMES
Manuel Palacín. Principal Investigator, Group on Amino Acid
Transporters: Biochemistry, Physiopathology, Genetics and Structural Biology
“The thrill of exploring is mostly fueled by curiosity”
Biochemist and molecular biologist Man-uel Palacín tends not to like common
things. He has been studying rare diseases for more than two decades now. His break-through work on amino acid transporters and their role in hereditary diseases led him to win the Smithkline Beecham Biomedicine Prize in 2004, a prestigious award for re-search excellence.
- What made you go for rare diseases?
“Actually, it was a coincidence. We were try-ing to find new insights into the nature of amino acid transporters, some of which are fundamental for life, and we ended up find-ing connections to hereditary diseases such as cystinuria, and also to much more rare disor-ders like lysinuric protein intolerance [LPI].”
- What makes this disease so rare?
“There are only over 200 known cases of LPI in first world countries. The highest rates of prevalence are in Finland, a valley area in Italy, and a small island in Japan. In fact, the disease was originally discovered in Finland in the 60s, and today the country has one of the highest frequency rates of some rare in-herited diseases.”
- Why?
“It’s a typical effect of genetic colonization. When the Finnish conquered the north of the country centuries ago, they started re-producing exclusively among themselves. The genetic risk obviously became much higher due to this reproductive exclusivity. LPI patients used to be in mental hospitals,
ANNA ALSINA
Photo: S. A
rmengou
but today, thanks to the advances in research and treatments, that has become the excep-tion. Physicians are not accustomed to treat-ing this condition. Dealing with rare diseases is never easy.”
- What makes you keep your patience when things don’t work as planned?
“The thrill of exploring is mostly fueled by curiosity. When something doesn’t work, you have to step back and realize that you need to swallow your ego and focus your at-tention back into the thrill of resolving some-thing nobody has ever done before. It’s the only way to move forward and get to that breakthrough you’re pursuing.”
- Is your research moved by intuition sometimes?
“I think all scientists have had a hunch at least once in their life. I’ll always remember that afternoon in my office when I realized rBAT was going to be one of the genes involved in cystinuria. There were no clues back then to be certain it would be, but I just knew it.”
- How do you explain that?
“Being a scientist is sometimes like being a detective. When you reach a point where you have a series of unconnected pieces of in-formation that apparently don’t fit together, that’s usually when you get a hunch. And once you have that hunch, you know you have to pursue it. There’s no turning back.”
- Is that stubbornness or a natural need to get answers?
“It think it’s all about what Cesare Pavese said once: Surprise is the motive behind all scientific discoveries.”
Birds never go unnoticed for Palacín, not even in a crowded city like Bar-celona. “People may not know it, but in this area where we work there are more than twenty different bird species during the year,” he says. Palacín’s pas-sion for photographing birds has fol-lowed him to remote countries such as Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya, but also to much more convenient places like the outskirts of Barcelona. “The Delta del Llobregat nature reserve has a very rich variety of birds that would seem impossible to find near a city.” He’s concerned about the birds’ habitat in one of the areas there though. “The Filipines wetlands have completely dried out since they closed the area and built a wall to prevent the water channel from overflowing. The birds are pretty much all gone and the soil is completely cracked—it’s uninhabit-able.” He says a solution is needed to stop further soil erosion and encour-ages the local authorities to weigh the possibility of finding a way to channel the water that gets dumped back into the sea at the El Prat desalination plant and redirect it to the dry wetlands.
Where did all the birds go?
A White Wagtail bird in the Filipines area at the Delta del Llobregat’s reserve. Photo: M. Palacín
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
07
Research tutors for a summer
The Mouse Mutant Core Facility has launched a new da-tabase of genetically modified mice lines
currently being held at IRB Barcelona. The database, accessible through the In-stitute’s intranet, is maintained and regu-larly updated by the core facility.
A new mice database
NEWS FROM THE PARK
The creative designer who produced Ma-drid’s Olympic dream slogan ‘Tengo una
corazonada’ (I have a hunch) explained in an interview that the idea came to him on a sleep-less night. He wanted to express a collective sentiment with which people could identify–not an easy thing to do. The decision to host the games in Rio may have broken the design-er’s heart but the slogan has been a hit. In fact, publicists say that in this complex world it’s increasingly difficult to sell an idea and to get it to reach society.
This task is doubly difficult in the case of researchers; in addition to orienting their re-search toward a field of market interest, they have to attract industry and ensure that these results are transformed into a specific applica-tion. There is a long distance to cover from the initial idea that comes out of a lab to the final product reaching the consumer. Many researchers are in unchartered waters during this process.
To cover this gap, the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) and the ‘Canceropôle de Tolouse’ jointly launched the initiative ‘1st Summer School on Medicines’ (SSM1). “The initial idea arose from society during the France-Spain Forum”, explains Jordi Quintana, di-rector of Science Policy at the PCB and of the SSM1 Scientific and Organizing Committee. “The goal is to inform PhD students and post-doctoral fellows about the different aspects of the process undertaken by pharmaceutical and biotech sectors to convert an idea into a drug and to strengthen concepts of the fields in which they work and their application to drug discovery”. The scientific programme of the course, held in September, included visits to renowned pharmaceutical companies and research centers in Barcelona and Toulouse and involved about 40 university lecturers from several European countries. The course was attended by 23 students, including 14 na-
From the lab to the market
tionalities. Among these was Edgar, a young physician from Venezuela who, at only 26 years of age, has already worked in primary health care centers and in hospital emergency departments. He describes the most interest-ing aspect of the course as being “finding out how researchers work, because there is an incredible gap between the fields of research and clinical practice.
Daniel Blasi, another course student, says that the experience has been in line with his work at the ChemBioBank project, which has allowed him to gain further insight into hit discovery. “The conclusion you draw from the SSM1 course is that the risks as-sumed by R+D companies are getting higher while the success rate is decreasing. There’s a need to diversify efforts, to collaborate and establish new avenues to obtain new drugs, and to resort to repurposing in order to re-duce risks and costs”.
Nina, a German PhD student at IRB Barcelona, was impressed by the structure of the course and appreciated the oppor-tunity to discover how things work in a company. “I’ve been in Barcelona for some time but I didn’t know that the PCB had a Bioincubator that promotes the set up of technology-based spin-offs. This is a really good initiative. A large part of researchers perform highly specialized tasks, and work-ing in a small enterprise of this kind allows you to diversify your work and to learn new things”. The second SSM course will be held in Toulouse (France) next year. If you missed the last course, sign up now for the next one!
Carme Pérez, PCB
The IRB Barcelona Board of Trustees had a new addition right before the summer vacation. Dr Carles Miquel Collell, coor-
dinator of the Research and Innovation Programme on Health Sciences of the Catalan Government, was appointed as new representative for the Department of Health. He will be responsible, along with the other Board members, for ap-proving the operating funds and oversee-ing the Institute’s activities and annual research goals.
New face on Board of Trustees
Learning how ideas develop into the commercialization of new drugs
For more information please contact Jordi Quintana ([email protected])
Several principal in-vestigators at IRB Barcelona had addi-tional help this sum-mer. Ten university
students spent their vacation days doing research work in IRB Barcelona labo-ratories and completed projects on cell and developmental biology, molecular medicine, chemistry, and structural and computational biology. Their efforts were part of ‘Spend the Summer at the Park’, an initiative run by the PCB that this year counted with a total of 40 par-ticipants.
IN BRIEF
in vivoOctober 2009 | Issue 08
NEW AT IRB BARCELONASPOTLIGHT
Published by the Institute for Research in Biomedicine . Office of Communications & External Relations. Barcelona Science Park. Baldiri Reixac, 10. 08028 Barcelona, Spain. www.irbbarcelona.org Editor: Anna Alsina. Associate Editor: Sarah Sherwood. Contributors: Sònia Armengou, Tanya Yates, Carme Pérez. Design: Aymerich Comunicació. Printing: Puresa. Graphic Production: La Trama. Legal deposit: B-20012-2009. © IRB Barcelona
www.irbbarcelona.org
Postdoctoral fellow Florencia Tevy (Argentina, 1978) has spent quite a lot of time in the fly room since she started to work at IRB Barcelona in September. A geneticist by background, she’s working hand in hand with researchers at both Joan J Guinovart and Marco Milan’s laboratories to create a Drosophila model for
Lafora disease from scratch. Florencia, who has worked on embryonic fruit fly models in the past, really likes the challenge of having switched to adult models. She’s had no problems adapting to Barcelona so far, and enjoys spending part of her free time in the Barceloneta district, where she says she tends to have funny language misunderstand-ings because of her Argentine accent.
... in celebration of creativity, science and art
Differen-t i a t i n g
mouse neuro-blastoma cells
or a work of art? It may depend on
how (or even where) you look at it - whether
under a microscope in the lab or on the wall of an art
museum. Our guess is that it could be both.
This image forms part of an exhibition called ‘Neu-ronal Land-scapes’, cu-rated by the ”la Caixa”
Foundation Obra Social, which showcases im-ages from neuroscience research and illustrates the development of observation techniques since the time of Ramon y Cajal.
A selection of works from this exhibition will be on display at IRB Barcelona as part of the upcoming Barcelona BioMed Forum on Creativity, Science and Art, to be held on No-vember 11, 2009.
The formal exhibition will be accompanied by artwork from members of our own scientific community, giving our researchers and other collaborators a chance to show a different side to their creativity. This, combined with an ex-ceptional programme of lectures and discus-sions by a distinguished international panel of scientists and artists will set the stage for a not-to-be-missed event... in celebration of creativity, science and art.
To register, visit www.irbbarcelona.org/biomed/scienceandart
Marta Sevillano (Spain, 1983) started to work in the IRB Barcelona Colorectal Cancer Laboratory in August, while many were enjoying their summer vacation. A hard worker by nature, she accepted her new position moved by her cu-riosity to learn the hidden aspects of a disease that causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year. Marta has been extremely busy combining her healthcare biology studies with her new duties as a lab technician, but she says it’s definitely worth it because she’s learning many new biology techniques that she didn’t know about.
Xavier Franch (Spain, 1974) will be leaving IRB Barcelona at the end of the year to take up a position as senior scientist at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (IBE), after having successfully obtained a government position by the Spanish National Research Council. He looks forward to the challenge of running his own lab for the first time, which by the way will have views of the Mediterranean. An expert in developmental biology and Drosophila, he will soon be combining his expertise in fruit fly models with a new promising insect for the study of evolutionary biology: the Tribolium flour beetle.
Cristina Méndez (Spain, 1984) is the first person you see when you enter the IRB Barcelona administration offices. She joined the team in July as the new Human Resources assistant to give support to a department that is faced with a non-stop growing number of hirings as well as to provide assistance
to the Institute’s core facilities. Her main duties include helping give newcomers a smooth start, processing entry forms and access cards, tracking vacation days, ad-ministering restaurant tickets for employees, delivering employee check stubs, and helping the core facilities with travel arrangements and event organization tasks. Cristina holds a degree in tourism and a Masters in event organization.
ON THE MOVE