January 2010 | Issue 09January 2010 | Issue 09

03 05 07 08Media matters: tips to get your message across

PhD Student Council brings in new faces

And the winner is ...

Endorphins on the rise

NEWSLETTER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN BIOMEDICINE

in vivoWhen science and art meet

Artists and scientists gather for a cele-bration of creativity, science and art at the Barcelona BioMed Forum, held on November 11

Page 04

Strengthening the war against metastasis

The MetCentre initiative joins efforts to develop a new strategy against cancer

Page 02

Been there, done that

PhD students and postdocs learn how to look beyond the bench at the ‘Career Progression in Science’ event

Page 03

Joining forces against tuberculosis and cancerIRB Barcelona researchers embark on two ambitious projects to find new treatments

Page 04

Unveiling the architecture of lifeThe 1st IRB Barcelona PhD Student Sym-posium explores the mysteries of life

Page 05

Faces to Names

IRB Barcelona PhD student Catrin Yous-sif discusses science, Coptic Christianity and her Egyptian roots

Page 06

02

Postdocs make sure they have what it takes Media matters: tips and tricks for getting your message across

Talk to researchers about the science and

the media, and you’ll often hear two

schools of thought. One: researchers should

talk to journalists so they can educate the pub-

Any postdoc will tell you, getting

ahead in research is no longer just

about being good at science. These days

a scientist needs to be able to juggle a

myriad of skills – from knowing how

to write successful grant proposals, to

managing a productive team, to being

able to communicate their work to oth-

er scientists, policy makers, potential

funders and the public. The problem

is, however, that they are often left up

to their own devices to do it. Acquiring

these “soft” skills can actually be quite

hard without some help.

Postdocs at IRB Barcelona are keen-

ly aware of their need for support at this

critical time in their careers and have

launched a series of initiatives to make

sure they have what they need to take

the next steps. Following the example of

the predoc community, they have set up

a council whose aim is to facilitate inter-

action, both professional and social, be-

tween postdocs from across the institute.

The group will also liaise between their

community and administration as well as

collaborate in the organization of train-

ing courses and career development ac-

tivities that will benefit their community.

In this last area, things have got off

to a flying start. Activities held so far

include an event on ‘Career Progression

in Science – Options Beyond the Bench’

on December 3, followed by a ‘Media

Training for Scientists’ workshop on

December 14. (For more on both events,

see facing page.) Postdocs interested in

honing their lab management skills will

attend a 4-day workshop in February

entitled ‘The Art of Leadership: Fewer

Conflicts, More Results’.

For more on postdoc activities at IRB

Barcelona, check out their new intranet

space at http://intranet.irb.pcb.ub.es/

Defeating the undefeatable is not impos-

sible if you have a good plan of attack.

Researchers at IRB Barcelona have spent the

past six months joining efforts to develop a

new strategy to fight metastasis, a brutally

unstoppable process that triggers ninety per-

cent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

Strengthening the war against metastasissic researchers and clinicians and boost the

number of multidisciplinary coalitions in the

city. It’s a crucial step to gain competitive ad-

vantage in the war against metastasis.”

As part of the MetCentre’s plans for the

next five years, IRB Barcelona groups led by

Roger Gomis, Eduard Batlle, Modesto Oro-

zco and Patrick Aloy, in collaboration with

the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, will

strive to bring to fruition innovative projects

to unravel the hidden mechanisms behind

breast and colon cancer metastases.

The projects will combine the fields of

oncology, computation, molecular medicine,

chemistry and developmental biology with

the expertise of clinicians from Barcelona’s

Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS, Vall d’Hebrón

Institute of Oncology (VHIO), Sant Pau

Hospital and Hospital del Mar. The stud-

ies targeting breast cancer metastasis will be

undertaken in collaboration with Massagué’s

laboratory at the Memorial Sloan Kettering

Cancer Center in New York.

Since its creation in July 2009,

the IRB Barcelona initiative

MetCentre has been holding

bimonthly meetings to launch

several collaborative research

projects on cancer and set the

basis of a global plan of action

to deconstruct metastasis.

“The MetCentre aims to

bring together under the same

umbrella all the knowledge

that runs in parallel in research centers and

hospitals in Barcelona,” said MetCentre Sci-

entific Coordinator and IRB Barcelona Ad-

junct Director Joan Massagué, before the new

alliance’s meeting on December 23. “The goal

is to act as a powerful and cohesive platform

to help effectively combine the efforts of ba-

Massagué (left) announced the MetCentre initiative in July, during an official visit by the President of the Catalan Government, José Montilla (right). Photo: M. Pérez

Journalist and geneticist Claire Ainsworth (right) led the Barcelona BioMed workshop ‘Media Training for Scientists’, held at IRB Barcelona on December 14. Ainsworth contributes to New Scientist, Nature and Science, and was print journalist of the year in the 2001 British Medical Journalism awards.

Photo: N

. Noriega

03

Media matters: tips and tricks for getting your message across

lic about science; the other: avoid the media at

all costs, because journalists are careless and ig-

norant and will mangle research findings. Both

are wide of the mark.

It’s always a good idea to think about what

you want to get out of an interaction with a

journalist, but be realistic about the outcome.

As a journalist, I hope readers learn something

useful from my articles, but I’m not here to ed-

ucate the public with what scientists think they

ought to know. My job is to serve my readers,

find informative, interesting stories, research

them objectively, and write them well.

For a news story, your aim should be to

inform people what your research is about

and why it matters, not provide an education

in your field. Try to include only the informa-

tion you need, explain your key points and

omit the tangents, however interesting. This

does not mean you have to “dumb down”

your work—far from it. You just need to be

selective. This is often the hardest part of com-

municating your research. Remember that

competent, well-resourced journalists will

not simply take what you say at face, value

and write the story exactly as you want it

written—they are not your PR agents. They

should research the topic and talk to other

experts in the field to evaluate your findings

for the reader. A journalist may well write

the story from a different angle from the one

you had in mind. Few will let you see their

copy before publication.

If that sounds alarming, it shouldn’t be.

Journalists are often caricatured as feck-

less sensationalists, and doubtless there are

a few like that out there. The ones I know,

however, care deeply about producing high-

quality journalism, and are mortified if they

get something wrong. Sorry examples of

lousy science reporting, such as the UK’s

MMR vaccine scare, are the exception rather

than the rule.

A 2008 survey of biologists revealed that Claire Ainsworth, SciConnect

“I really liked the informal format of

the event. It was useful to hear about the

speakers’ professional lives, their doubts,

the problems and difficulties they faced…

It was encouraging to hear that they were

‘normal people’ and to learn how far they

had come by following their dreams and

being brave. I left the session feeling that

everything was possible. The speakers

transmitted a lot of positive energy. I think

we all opened our minds a bit.”

VIEWPOINT — What was the most useful thing you heard at the Career Day?

Irene Martín, PhD Student

“The advice the speakers gave about the

importance of networking was really use-

ful. It is definitely helpful to get in touch

with people during conferences, work-

shops or career days when you are look-

ing for a job, since many positions are not

advertised in scientific journals, institute

websites or job portals. I think this net-

working effort can be helpful not only

when you are looking for a job beyond

the bench, but also when doing research.”

Andreas Zanzoni, Postdoctoral Fellow

the majority were ‘mostly pleased’ with their

interactions with journalists (Peters HP et al,

Science, 321, 204-205, 2008). Good quality

science journalism does exist.

That said, many sections of the media are

currently in crisis. Drastic budget cutbacks

mean that fewer journalists are chasing more

stories to ever tighter deadlines. Many out-

lets have dropped their specialist science cor-

respondents.

As a result, more press releases are be-

ing regurgitated uncritically with little or no

reporting being done. I’m certainly not try-

ing to excuse this sloppy “churnalism”, but

I would encourage scientists to take the same

care over the content of their press releases

as they do with their peer-reviewed papers.

Once a rash speculation or badly explained

risk factor gets out there, there is no clawing

it back.

Finally, if in doubt, make use of your

press office—they can help you make the

most of, and even enjoy the experience.

“I really appreciated the opportunity we

had to ask questions to the participants. I

learnt interesting things, such as the differ-

ence between the work of a patent examiner

and a patent attorney or how an MBA can

improve your ability to turn science into

business. This kind of event is really help-

ful, especially for PhD students in their

final stages. Being aware of all the possi-

bilities helps you to make good decisions

about your future.”

The ‘Career Progression in Science’ event, held on December 3, was organized by IRB Barcelona and the Barcelona Science Park to give PhD students and postdocs insight into their career development. The event was such a success that a second edition is planned for later this year.

Margarita Alvira, PhD Student

in vivoJanuary 2010 | Issue 09

04

Tuberculosis and cancer patients around the globe could see their lives improve in a few

years, thanks to the two multidisciplinary proj-ects IRB Barcelona researchers have recently em-barked on as partners.

CSIC scientist and IRB Barcelona principal investigator Ignasi Fita and his research team have started the new year with an ambitious goal: to unravel the resistance mechanisms that lie behind the tuberculosis bacteria. Their con-tribution is part of ‘Nostress’, a 7th Framework Programme project led by the University of Bar-celona that aims to find new drugs to treat this devastating infectious disease.

IRB Barcelona researchers at the Cell Divi-sion Laboratory, led by Cayetano González, are also joining efforts to find new strategies to fight cancer by contributing with Drosophila studies to ‘Oncológica’, a new research project led by the company PharmaMar and funded by the Spanish Government’s 5th National Strategic Consortiums for Technological Research Pro-gramme (CENIT).

Fighting mental illnesses with Chinese plants

Chinese plants could bring new hope to the more than 250 million patients worldwide

who struggle with schizophrenia and bipolar dis-order. IRB Barcelona researcher Teresa Tarragó was recently given the green light to lead a three-year project aimed to find new drugs to treat the cognitive deficits caused by mental illnesses.

Funded by the ‘Marató de TV3’ Foundation, the team of researchers will use extracts from medicinal plants from China and the Mediterra-nean to find new molecules that will target pro-lyl oligopeptidase, a protein involved in learn-ing and memory functions. “If things work as planned, we should be able to start clinical trials in humans in five years,” says Tarragó.

Joining forces against tuberculosis and cancer

When science and art meet

lection of works entitled ‘Neuronal Landscapes’, on loan from the La Caixa Foundation. The formal exhibition was complemented by contributions from members of the IRB Barcelona commu-nity who were invited to prepare and submit their own works of art.

The Forum was also preceded by a one-day artist-in-residence programme in which three local artists were select-ed to join IRB Barcelona laboratories and work with scientists to get a first-hand look at some of the techniques and methodologies used in today’s bio-medical research. Marco Milán, Neus Rafel, Marco Grillo, Elena Rebollo from the Cell and Developmental Biol-ogy Programme, and Julien Colombelli from the Advanced Digital Microscopy Core Facility led the artists through their research activities, providing them with inspiration for future projects.

For one day in late autumn, sci-entists traded in their pipettes

for paint brushes, the hallways of the Tower Building of the Barcelona Sci-ence Park transformed into a makeshift art gallery, and IRB Barcelona became a canvas for a new type of experiment. Artists and scientists gathered for a celebration of creativity, science and art at the Barcelona BioMed Forum, held on November 11. Activities ranged from lectures and debates to exhibi-tions and workshops to explore ques-tions such as what is science? What is nature? What is art? What do they have in common and how do they differ? What role does creativity play in both areas?

Setting the stage for the festivities was Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford Uni-versity, who delivered a fascinating lecture on the observational acumen and creative genius of one of the most inspirational and iconic figures in the history of art and science, Leonardo da Vinci. He was followed by a session that paired Marta de Menezes, a Portu-guese artist who works at the interface between art and biology, with Marco Milán, Programme Coordinator of IRB Barcelona’s Cell and Developmental Biology Programme, who talked about the potential of Drosophila and develop-mental biology as an inspirational tool for art.

The lecture hall then came alive with the sound of music, as Jorge Wagens-berg (Professor of Physics, University of Barcelona and CosmoCaixa scien-tific director) and Jordi Cervelló (Cata-lan composer) provided an animated and entertaining discussion about the inspiration behind a symphony they composed based on shape and form and principles of physics.

Throughout the Forum activities, participants were able to view a col- Sarah Sherwood

(From top to bottom) Artwork on display, Marta de Menezes, Martin Kemp, Jordi Cervelló and Jorge Wagensberg.

Photos: M

. Pérez

in vivoJanuary 2010 | Issue 09

05

lia Farm Research Campus, who spoke about genome sequences and the computational ef-forts to handle them, such as BLAST and the human genome project. Among the invited speakers was the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Ada Yonath, who gave an over-view of the architecture of the ‘protein fac-tory’ of the cell, the ribosome, including an-tibiotic binding sites for bacterial ribosomes.

Short talks by PhD students and poster sessions were followed by an open discus-sion in which invited speakers gave insight into how they moved across the world while building their careers. Their comments pro-vided food for thought for the many PhD students that will face these steps in the near future.

After many months of intense planning,

the eight organizers of the first IRB

Barcelona PhD Student Symposium saw

their efforts paid off on November 2. More

than 100 participants and speakers came from

around the world to Barcelona for two full

days of scientific talks, discussions and poster

sessions at the science museum CosmoCaixa.

Under the theme ‘The Architecture of

Life’, the 1st IRB Barcelona PhD Student

Symposium brought together a renowned

lineup of international speakers to present

the latest breakthroughs in molecular build-

ing blocks of life, cells, tissues and organisms.The scientific sessions began with re-

searcher Gene Myers, from the HHMI Jane-

PhD Symposium speakers and organizers (left to right, top to bottom): Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Ada Yonath, Anna Arnal, Gavin Whissell, Tanja Kortemme, Stephen Cohen, Duarte Mesquita, Darren Gilmour, Roland Pache, Eric Miska, Wolfgang Baumeister, Diana Martinez, Neus Rafel, Amelie Stein, Francisco Barriga and Gene Myers.

PhD Student Symposium Committee

Unveiling the architecture of lifeThe second day of the symposium included presentations on cryo-electron-tomographic studies of large macromolecular structures, the mechanisms that cells in mouse em-bryos use to differentiate in the first cell-fate decisions, collective cell migration in Zebrafish, and an overview of the latest stud-ies on miRNAs in Drosophila.

The symposium concluded with an awards session for the best poster and short talk. The speakers had a hard time deciding the winners due to the quality of the works presented and the wide range of topics. The best poster prize was awarded to PhD stu-dent Xavier Serra-Picamal, from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, for his work on technologies developed to study cell mi-gration, and the best short talk prize went to Alejandro Burga, PhD student at the Center for Genomic Regulation, for his presentation on phenotype prediction.

Thanks to the support of IRB Barcelona and CosmoCaixa, the first PhD Student Sym-posium saw its goals accomplished and suc-cessfully brought together young motivated students and internationally renowned sci-entists to exchange knowledge on the archi-tecture of life, encourage multidisciplinary discussions, learn about new fields, and hope-fully create the basis for future collaborations.

Photo: N

. Noriega

IRB Barcelona PhD Student Council elections bring in new faces

Dozens of IRB Barcelona PhD stu-

dents skipped their daily routine for

a few minutes on December 16-17 to par-

ticipate in the first PhD Student Council

elections and vote for their favorite candi-

dates to represent them.

The vote count results gave the vic-

tory to ten members - two representatives

per research programme - who formally

took over their predecessors’ duties during

the first meeting of the new PhD Student

Council held on January 13.

The new council members will work

hand in hand with the PhD student com-

munity until the next elections, scheduled

to take place in 2011. Founded in April

2008, the PhD Student Council is respon-

sible for organizing student-run activities,

such as the PhD Student Symposium and the

cool-off sessions, as well as acting as a liaison

between the more than 150 IRB Barcelona PhD

students and the Institute’s management.

Newly elected PhD Student Council membersCell and Developmental Biology Programme: Beatriz García (Eduardo Soriano’s lab), Oscar Martorell (Jordi Casanova’s lab) | Structural and Computational Biol-ogy Programme: Radoslaw Pluta (Miquel Coll’s lab), Manuel Alonso (Patrick Aloy’s lab) | Molecular Medi-cine Programme: Jordi Lanuza (Carme Caelles’ lab), Selma Pereira (Antonio Celada’s lab) | Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Programme: Eva De Mol (Xavier Salvatella’s lab), Michael Goldflam (Ernest Giralt’s lab) | Oncology Programme: Milica Pavlovic (Roger Gomis’ lab), Katrin Rein (Travis Stracker’s lab)

Photo: C

. Cam

inal

in vivoJanuary 2010 | Issue 09

06

FACES TO NAMES

Catrin Youssif. PhD Student, IRB Barcelona Group on Macrophage Biology: Regulation of Gene Expression

“Living in Egypt is dangerous if you’re not part of the Islamic community”

Catrin Youssif (Vienna, 1985) is of

Egyptian descent, but was born and

raised in Austria. Though her parents left

Egypt in the eighties, the country remains at

the forefront of her mind.

- Why did your parents move to Austria?

“They didn’t want to raise their kids in

Egypt, it wasn’t safe.”

- Why?

“My parents are Egyptian Christians. Liv-

ing in Egypt is dangerous if you’re not part

of the Islamic community. The majority of

government laws are fundamentalist and un-

fortunately Coptic Christians don’t have that

many rights there. There’s a lot of discrimi-

nation against them.”

- In which way?

“You see it everywhere, in schools, in jobs,

on the streets ... When my mom was study-

ing at the university she failed an oral exam

before even taking the test. The examiner

failed her right after he realized she had a

Christian name.”

- What was your reaction when you read

about the radical Islamists who killed six

Copts on Christmas Eve?

“I was horrified. The saddest part is that

atrocities are not only happening during the

Christmas season but throughout the year. It’s

especially dangerous for Christian women to

live there because they don’t wear head cover-

ings. In the past, not all Islamic women wore

veils, but now every single one of them does.”

ANNA ALSINAconquering more land. The Muslim popula-

tion in Egypt is growing very quickly ... The

other reason may be the ongoing fight against

Islam, which in a way is also encouraged

through the media. It makes them get even

more empowered to fight for their religion.”

- Did you know that there’s a group of Or-

thodox Jews named Neturei Karta that is

against zionism and supports the Palestin-

ian community?

“I wasn’t aware of this, but it’s a fact that

things are never black or white. Our family

in Egypt has many Muslim friends that sup-

port them and fear for their safety. They are

also horrified about the atrocities carried out

by their own people against Copts.”

- What’s the history behind the Coptic

community?

“They are the direct offspring of the Egyp-

tian Pharaohs—they inherited many things

from these ancient kings. The Copts emerged

from the Egyptian Christian church in 451.

They have been persecuted since, but they

have always tried to be strong and have never

given up on their beliefs.”

- If you could make a wish, what would you

like to see happen?

“I just wish Coptic people could live where

they want, without threats, with no fear.

There’s a huge difference between leaving

your country on your own will or being

forced to because your life is at stake. It’s hard

to believe that there are still many people

who feel they have the right to use violence

against others because of their religion.”

Catrin doesn’t underestimate the pow-wer of macrophages and their key role in protecting the immune system from foreign invaders. Since she joined IRB Barcelona in September, she’s been working to find new connections be-tween this type of white blood cells and aging. She says that the results de-rived from research on macrophages can be extremely useful to help fight diseases such as chronic inflamma-tion, infections, aging, arthritis, cancer and HIV. Catrin was one of the very few candidates, among hundreds, who succeeded in obtaining a “la Caixa”/IRB Barcelona International PhD Pro-gramme fellowship.

- Why do you think they are becoming

more radical?

“For several reasons. I think part of it has to

do with the Islamic idea of expanding and

Photo: N

. Noriega

An antidote against diseases

in vivoJanuary 2010 | Issue 09

07

Cross-continental exchanges

IRB Barcelona Direc-tor Joan Guinovart added a new responsi-bility to his list of du-

ties in January. He was elected unani-mously as the new treasurer of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), and will be responsible for overseeing the financial affairs of the union.

New treasurer for the IUBMB

At their annual Fo-rum event in Decem-ber, BioCat named IRB Barcelona Ad-

junt Director Joan Massagué Ambas-sador of the BioRegion of Catalonia for his breakthrough contributions to biomedical research. Màrius Ru-biralta, Secretary General of Uni-versities for the Spanish Ministry of Education and former IRB Barce-lona Principal Investigator was also recognized for the key role that he played in the creation of the BioRe-gion. In a separate award, Massagué also received the International Prize of the ‘Santiago Dexeus Font’ Foun-dation in recognition of his work on cancer research.

Ambassador of the BioRegion

NEWS FROM THE PARK

Many scientific discoveries have been the result of chance, mainly because over the

course of a research project there are often unex-pected reactions that enable the formulation of new theories.

The most recent example is the winning im-age of the latest scientific photography contest organized by the PCB, ‘Fotorecerca’, which shows a yeast cell on a particle. Titled ‘The world is mine!’, the author Claudia Dei Negri, of the company Eurofins Biolab, explains that the im-age is part of her daily work and that she came upon it “by chance” while performing research to detect the existence of microorganisms on critical surfaces related with the field of human health. The photograph was obtained using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FES-EM), a technique that increased the sample’s real size by 1,000. The image holds scientific inter-est because it helps to determine the presence of contamination. It also presents artistic value due to the position of the elements in the photograph and the mysterious nature of the image.

The other winning image, submitted by Maria Marsal, is also part of her daily research work in Enrique Martin Blanco’s Development

And the winner is...Biology Group (IBMB-CSIC). It shows a ze-brafish embryo – an organism that serves as a model for research - during the early stages of gastrulation. The image was acquired using a LEICA SP5 confocal microscope, available at the IRB Barcelona Advanced Digital Micros-copy (ADM) Core Facility. It is a superposi-tion of images taken from different angles of the three-dimensional embryo, which the author recreated artistically using the ImageJ programme to assign distinct color patterns to the cells’ nuclei. The colors of the image, titled ‘Rainbow zebrafish’, make it not just more ap-pealing but are also a very useful tool to help determine the position of cells in the embryo, and thus enabling a very accurate follow-up of how these behave during this process.

Discovering what is behind these images is a fun and creative way of doing scientific out-reach and showing the research that is carried out at the PCB and the technologies employed. It is also, however, a way to share the daily re-search activities and show that the line between art and science can be very blurred when cre-ativity is unleashed.

Carme Pérez, PCB

Three delegations of scientists from Chile, Colombia and Japan visited IRB Barcelona

this winter to gain insight into the research activities that lie behind the Institute’s ongoing contribution to scientific breakthroughs. The delega-tion of Japanese executives paid a spe-cial visit to the Innovation and Stra-tegic Projects Department to learn about their latest tech transfer plans.

IN BRIEF A way busy fall

By the time all the seminars, conferences and forums held in the past three months

were over, IRB Barcelona researchers certainly needed a rest.

In addition to the regular weekly seminars, the company Bitplane came to the Institute on October 14-16 to teach researchers how to use IMARIS, a 3D software for microscopy imag-ing. A few days later, many IRB Barcelona re-searchers met with international experts at the Barcelona BioMed Conference ‘Peptide Engi-neering: Therapeutic Peptides’ (October 26-28), organized in collaboration with the BBVA Foundation. The next month, the ‘Spine 2-Com-

plexes Teach SG Workshop’ (November 19-20) targeted technologies for the expression of proteins and multi-subunit protein complexes in yeast. The event was followed by ‘Expand-ing the Frontiers of Molecular Dynamics Simulations in Biology’ (November 23-25), a conference jointly organized with the Barce-

lona Supercomputing Center.

December was also a busy month. Among the various events was the ‘Infectious Dis-eases and Health Meeting’ on December 9, organized in collaboration with the ‘Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS’, and the BSC-IRB Barcelona conference on proteins ‘Critical Assessment of Predirect Interaction’, held on December 9-11. Phew.

Nuria Noriega

First (left) and second winner images of ‘Fotorecerca’. For more information: www.pcb.ub.cat/fotorecerca09

in vivoJanuary 2010 | Issue 09

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: Nuria Noriega, Tanya Yates, Carme Pérez. Design: Aymerich Comunicació. Printing: Puresa. Graphic Production: La Trama. Legal deposit: B-1728-2010. This document has been printed on recycled paper. © IRB Barcelona

www.irbbarcelona.org

Ramon Martínez (Spain, 1980) found what he was looking for when he accepted a postdoc position in Eduardo Soriano’s research team at IRB Barcelona: to put his knowledge on traffic of proteins to work without leaving the city. “It’s not necessary to move out of the country to do cutting-edge research anymore,

there’s really good science going on in Spain.” A biologist by training, Ramon will devote the next four years to exploring vesicular traffic in neuronal structures and learn about their growth mechanisms during development. He likes to spend part of his free time doing ‘kung fu’ to boost his concentration and control of body movements. “Hopefully I’ll never have to use what I’ve learned outside the gym,” he jokes.

Endorphins on the rise

Moved by a curiosity to explore nature and to network while taking deep

breaths going uphill, more than 40 IRB Bar-celona researchers went on an expedition to the peak of ‘Matagalls’, a 1,700-meter moun-tain in the Montseny region, on November 7. Principal investigator Xavier Salvatella was the driving force behind the launch of the IRB Bar-celona Mountaineering Club, a new initiative that plans to take researchers to remote areas of Catalonia.

- Did something unexpected happen during the hike?

“Not really, things ran smoothly, except for when we made it to the top of the mountain. It was freezing and extremely windy. We had to hike back down quickly and didn’t get to enjoy the views as much as we would have liked to compensate the effort.”

- What will be the next adventure?

“It will be a more technical hike with profes-sional snowshoes. We plan to make it to the peak of ‘Bastiments’, a snowed mountain in the Pyrenees with breathtaking panoramic views of Catalonia and France.”

- How does science and hiking get along?

“There are obviously exceptions, but from what I’ve seen so far researchers tend to be pretty healthy and enjoy the outdoors. I have many scientist friends who are fond of nature and have hobbies like studying plants or bird watching. I think it’s probably a bit more fre-quent in science than in other professions.”

Oscar Reina (Spain, 1976) has spent his first weeks at the IRB Barcelona Bioinformatics/Biostatistics Unit deciphering algorithms. His immediate goals as Research Officer are to help researchers analyze and interpret the results of the vast amounts of data that come out of high-throughput technolo-gies. Oscar left his prior position at the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Bellvitge moved by a desire to focus a lot more on bioinformatics and genetics. His profes-sional background on cutting-edge technologies doesn’t seem to affect his personal life. He opposes the idea that analog photography is a dying art and likes to spend time in the darkroom giving life to his photographs of people and places.

Álvaro Somoza (Spain, 1975) recently left Ramon Eritja’s group at IRB Barcelona to take up a new position as junior re-searcher at the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies (IMDEA), an institute recently founded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Regional Government of Madrid. Ál-

varo says he’s sad to leave his friends behind but is confident that the high-speed train AVE will help him combat his homesickness. He looks forward to focusing his re-search on nanomedicine using oligonucleotides and nanoparticles, and to contributing to the creation of this new research center.

ON THE MOVE

Photo: A

. Grosu

Susana Ros (Spain, 1980) has just taken up a postdoctoral fel-lowship at the London Research Institute. She joined IRB Barce-lona in July 2003 and left in December after completing her thesis on the metabolic impact of liver glycogen synthase activation. The timing of her move to London has coincided with the heavi-est snowfalls in 30 years and she says she’s now an expert at walking on icy pavements. Hosted by Almut Schulze’s lab, Susana will enter a completely new field of research: signaling and cancer. Her work will address the wiring of signaling processes and the role of metabolic pathways in the growth and survival of cancer cells.