In Vivo 10

April 2010 | Issue 10April 2010 | Issue 10

04 05 07 08Behind the Scenes: PhD selection week

Teaching school teachers about microscopy

A nose to sniff out disease

The ‘bad cop’ at IRB Barcelona

NEWSLETTER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN BIOMEDICINE

in vivo

In Focus

IRB Barcelona researchers discover a new method to trace the behavior of unstruc-tured proteins

Pages 02

Plugging in to industry

IRB Barcelona researchers strengthen their ties with biotechnology companies through two new collaborations

Page 02

The 50th anniversary of an atomic revelationA look at the discovery of the first three-dimensional protein structures

Page 03

Learning to lead

Researchers spend four days gaining in-sight into management at an IRB Barce-lona workshop devoted to leadership

Page 04

High-speed publishing

The Development and Growth Control Laboratory publishes three new research papers in renowned journals in one month

Page 04

Faces to Names

IRB Barcelona researcher Rodrigo Gatica talks about the earthquake that recently hit Chile and its consequences for science

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in vivoApril 2010 | Issue 10

Cancer cells have a new opponent in Spain. The Protein NMR Spectroscopy

Laboratory at IRB Barcelona has recently embarked as a partner on a new quest to find strategies to fight cancer. The group’s efforts are part of a new Consolider project in mo-lecular oncology funded by the Spanish Min-istry of Science and Innovation.

“We will contribute with visual rep-resentations of molecular complexes that should hopefully lead to new ideas to de-

IRB Barcelona scientists Ernest Giralt and Miquel Pons have started to ex-

plore the potential of combining basic research with powerful techniques de-veloped by biotech companies.

The two IRB Barcelona research groups have recently received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to collaborate with the bio-tech companies Intelligent Pharma and Lead Molecular Design to identify more efficient methods to obtain new drugs.

To accomplish this challenging mis-sion, Intelligent Pharma and Giralt’s group will work together to test the efficacy of Helios 2.0, an innovative search tool developed by the Barcelona-based biotech company. The studies will target AIDS, hypercholesterolemia, and multi-resistant bacterial infections, the latter being one of the main causes of

hospital deaths in Europe and the United States.

Miquel Pons and scientists at Lead Molecular Design will develop and vali-date new software to achieve improved performance for an innovative strategy known as fragment screening. Their re-sults should allow them to obtain power-ful compounds. This project also involves groups at the Barcelona Science Park and the Sarrià Chemical Institute.

One of IRB Barcelona’s missions is to transform basic research into innovation and to strengthen ties with the biotechnol-ogy industry. During 2009, IRB Barcelona research groups participated in more than twenty collaborations with the private sector at the local, national and interna-tional levels.

Nothing is impossible when the mind embraces uncertainty. Or

at least for some. Betting on major challenges is something

that chemists at the IRB Barcelona Laboratory of Molecular Bio-

physics were not afraid of, especially when they knew these had

the potential to unlock breakthrough results for neurodegenera-

“The hardest part of this project was to

convince ourselves that it was possible be-

cause we didn’t know whether our intuition

was correct. We got enthusiastic when we saw

that the algorithms we had programmed were

working,” says postdoctoral researcher San-

tiago Esteban, the main author of this finding.

The new method, a result of a long strug-

gle with experimental data, algorithms and

programming, has allowed researchers to

track down the behavior patterns of highly

volatile and unstructured proteins, some-

thing that had previously been untraceable.

“We knew that within chaos there had

to be a certain order. Coming up with a tool

to measure the behavior of unstructured

proteins was really necessary—up to about

one third of all the currently known proteins

involved in diseases don’t have a defined

structure,” explains chemist Xavier Salva-

tella, the IRB Barcelona group leader behind

this work. The findings, he says, could open

new research avenues in the search for drugs

that target these chaotic proteins, which are

known to play a key role in neurodegenera-

tive diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkin-

son’s, and also in cancer progression.

tive diseases and cancer research. The team, led by group leader

Xavier Salvatella, has recently discovered a new method that for

the first time will allow them to trace the behavior of unstruc-

tured proteins. Their findings were published in the April issue of

the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

When the seemingly impossible becomes feasible

IN FOCUS

Plugging in to industry

Fighting back at cancer

Maria Macias in the IRB Barcelona nuclear magnetic resonance room. Photo: A. Alsina

Sònia Armengou


03

sign molecules that can translate into new drugs,” says Maria Macias, group leader of the Protein NMR Spectros-copy Laboratory. The group will use nuclear magnetic resonance tech-niques to screen the abundant inter-actions between small molecules and protein or RNA targets. The ultimate goal is to speed up the process of drug design.

The consortium, called ‘An inte-grated approach to post-transcription-al regulation of gene expression and its role in human disease’ (RNAREG), will spend the next four years study-ing the impact of gene regulation in cancer. The twelve research groups from nine institutions participating in the project will also study the role of RNA-binding proteins in the control of cell multiplication, ageing and cell death.

RNAREG is an initiative coordi-nated by group leader Juan Valcárcel at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona.

Celerino Abad-Zapatero (UIC)/Ignasi Fita

“The outcome is a software

program that gets fed experi-

mental data and automatically

executes the calculations for us

to detect and measure the prop-

erties of unstructured proteins,”

says postdoctoral researcher

Robert Fenwick, the second

author of this paper. He spent

a big part of his time working

hand in hand with Santiago and

the ubiquitin protein, the model

they used in their laboratory

experiments and structural calculations to

develop the program.

Their discovery has already drawn the

attention of the international scientific

community. “We’ve been approached by

several research groups that have experi-

mental data and are interested in using the

system,” says Esteban. The group plans to

make the platform available to scientists

around the world who have valuable infor-

mation on unstructured proteins.

An ancient city in Mesopotamia“It was just a coincidence,” says Este-

ban. Apparently, the Mesopotamian city

of Eridu, inhabited by one of the earliest

urban societies in the world, has the same

name as the acronym that the group has

chosen for their new method: ‘Ensemble

Refinement of Intrinsically Disordered

and Unstructured molecules.’

The first three-dimensional structures of the proteins myoglobin and hemoglobin

unveiling all the intricacy of their atomic or-ganization were published in 1960 in Nature. The images revealed an atomic complexity never seen before. How was this achieved? Who were the participants? The answers to this breakthrough were discussed during the special Barcelona BioMed Seminar ‘A cel-ebration of the 50th anniversary of the first protein structures’, held on February 5 at IRB Barcelona and jointly organized with the Mo-lecular Biology Institute of Barcelona.

The 50th anniversary of an atomic revelation

The discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Con-rad Roentgen in 1895 and of the use of this radiation to study crystal structures by Laue, Fiedrich and Knipping in 1912 opened the first door that would later lead to the atomic break-through. The application of these techniques to biomacromolecules, however, still had to wait several decades, but its origins can be traced back to England thanks to the work from the Braggs (father William Henry and son William Lawrence) and John Desmond Bernal’s vision.

The molecules that make life possible, however, proved to be much more fragile and delicate than the salt crystals studied by the Braggs. In 1934, Bernal and Crowfoot dem-onstrated the need to keep the crystals wet to retain crystalline order. With this insight, many subtle crystal handling details were mastered by Rosalind Franklin to obtain the famous dif-fraction patterns from DNA fibers, which al-lowed the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953.

To determine the crystal structure of the first proteins was an even much more difficult endeavor than for DNA. Both the techniques and the theory had to be defined along the way and then painfully and slowly refined un-til they were proven to be successful. Protein purification and manipulation, crystallization, data collection, computation (with the primi-tive computer prototypes available) and model building and analysis were all unavoidable steps that required the highest doses of personal en-durance and scientific creativity.

The pioneers of these discoveries are now legendary names in structural and molecu-lar biology with several Nobel Prize winners among them, including Max Perutz and John Kendrew.

Michael Rossmann (Purdue University), one of the key players in the discovery of the three-dimensional structures of the first proteins, gave the opening lecture ‘From hemoglobin to complex viruses: an odyssey’ during the commemorative event at IRB Barcelona. In the background is the structure of hemoglobin published in 1960.

Anna Alsina

The findings published in JACS were the result of joint work between Santiago Esteban (left), Xavier Salvatella (center) and Robert Fenwick (right). Photo: R. Solà

in vivo

04

April 2010 | Issue 10

“Narrowing the number of applicants down

to 30 for the final round of interviews wasn’t

easy. During their short stay at IRB Barce-

lona the candidates presented their research

work so that we could analyze their poten-

tial and capacities, and later they were inter-

viewed by each of the group leaders of the

programme they had applied for. Some get

pretty nervous knowing they’ve got to im-

press us.”

A short-listed group of candidates for the ”la Caixa”/IRB Barcelona International

PhD Fellowship Programme came to the In-

BEHIND THE SCENES IRB Barcelona’s PhD selection weekHigh-speed publishing

The Development and Growth Con-

trol Laboratory at IRB Barcelona is

on a winning streak. The group, led by

Marco Milán, has published in just over

a month three new research papers in re-

nowned international journals.

The first, published in Current Biol-

ogy on March 23, revealed a surprising

new function of the Notch protein that

could provide new clues for the design of

effective therapies. Their work got the at-

tention of the editors of the journal, who

decided to dedicate the issue’s cover page

to one of the group’s scientific images of

their findings on Notch.

The group’s cutting-edge research

based on Drosophila Melanogaster also

led to the publication of a further two

scientific papers, one in EMBO Reports

on April 9, and another one in the EMBO

Journal on April 16.

Ferran Azorín PhD Advisory Committee member

Milán (pictured) has been runinng the Development and Growth Control Laboratory since its creation in 2003.

Learning to lead

“Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders,” once said Tom

Peters, an American writer on business man-agement practices. Though he may have been referring to the corporate world, the senti-ment is no less true of science. Predocs be-come postdocs and postdocs (albeit with a little luck) become group leaders. Somewhere along the line they have to learn how to lead.

Unfortunately, however, scientists are often left to figure things out on their own and receive no formal training. To give them a hand, IRB Barcelona organized a workshop in which 18 eighteen researchers spent four intensive days gaining insight into mentor-ship and management and learning the skills and approaches they will need to face the challenges of running a lab. The workshop was a follow-up to one held for group leaders two years ago, but this time it was directed toward postdocs and research associates.

Being a senior researcher in a lab with growing responsibilities presents a whole new set of challenges. As research associ-ate Natàlia Carulla, who is responsible for several projects and a number of junior re-searchers, observes: “Leadership involves three aspects: having a vision, working out relationships within the team and setting up the tasks to achieve well-defined goals. One

of the key points I learned in the course deals with building relationships and communicat-ing with your team. When communicating, it’s better to avoid judgements but offer ar-guments and facts instead. It’s important to speak in the first person and state your own opinions. It’s not the same to say ‘You have failed to carry out this experiment’ as it is to say ‘I find that we need to find out appropri-ate controls to validate this result’. It seems quite simple when you first hear it, but it’s not so easy to put it into practice.”

“An excellent leader is a kind of super-man, who has incredible skills and knows how and when to use them,” says research associate Joaquim Calbó. “It’s not easy - maybe not even possible - to become such a perfect being. However, this course did help me to realize that leadership skills can be de-veloped, and increased my awareness about guiding principles for leading a team: respect others’ viewpoints, collect data, stick to ob-servations, be aware of differences (cultural, personality, background…), and above all, use common sense.”

Photo: M

B H

ansen

The IRB Barcelona BioMed Workshop on ‘The Art of Leadership: Fewer Conflicts, More Results’ was held on Feb 8-11 at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and run by Metis Leadership.


05

stitute on April 12-13 for the final round of interviews, the last stage of the PhD selec-tion process. The ten best candidates, the

“One of our main tasks is to make sure that

the candidates coming from non-commu-

nitarian countries submit their travel visa

paperwork in time—sometimes they may not

be aware of how time consuming this process

is. Dealing with embassies is rewarding but

also one of the most challenging parts of our

job. It’s good our phones have an automatic

redial option. We could certainly use a break

after dealing with all the bureaucracy.”

BEHIND THE SCENES IRB Barcelona’s PhD selection weekdoing research toward their theses. The new students will join an established community of more than 150 PhD stu-dents in September.

A lot of work behind the scenes was needed to make sure that the PhD selec-tion week ran smoothly.

names of which will be revealed in May, will be granted a PhD fellowship to spend four years in IRB Barcelona laboratories

“The days before the PhD selection week we

work at a rate of knots. We track down atten-

dance confirmation, help the Conference and

Event coordinator with the logistics and put

together the agenda for the candidates. We also

coordinate the presentation sessions and the

dozens of individual interviews between the

candidates and the group leaders. This year we

received more than 300 applications for this

call, most of which were international.”

“Apart from helping to organize the ‘cool-

off’ session to welcome the candidates in a

more informal way, we also hang out with

them during their lunch breaks so that they

can ask us questions about our experience

doing a PhD, our daily routines in the lab,

or even social aspects such as what life is

like in Barcelona. Since we are also stu-

dents, the candidates feel very comfortable

and really open to ask questions.”

Clara Caminal, Patricia Nadal Research & Academic Administration

Maria Rovira, Silvia Aguadé Human Resources Department

Eva De Mol PhD Student Council member

Teaching school teachers about microscopy

Since the construction of the first rudimentary microscope

by Dutch eyeglassmakers in 1590, the introduction of optical devices and visualization techniques have revolutionized the way scientists observe and understand living or-ganisms. While the first micro-scopes provided researchers with a rough glimpse of the structure of a fly’s eye or of a red blood cell, today’s high-resolution technologies allow us to ob-serve organisms, tissues, cells and molecules at incredible detail and even in real time, af-fording unprecedented insight into biological processes at the molecular level.

Twenty-two secondary school teach-ers got a first-hand look at the potential of cutting-edge microscopy technologies at a special workshop called ‘Colours of Life: New Frontiers of Microscopy’, organized by

the European Learning Lab for the Life Sci-ences (ELLS) of the European Molecular Bi-ology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy on March 1-3. Julien Colombelli, head of IRB Barcelona’s Advanced Digital Microscopy Core Facility, participated in the event as an expert instructor.

The three-day course gave teachers from across Europe a detailed look at modern mi-croscopy methods and their applications in the life sciences, and even allowed them to

Sarah Sherwood

come up with ways to use the technologies in their teaching activities. Participants attended lectures by top scientists about their work and then rolled up their sleeves for hands-on practical lab activities where they learned skills such as staining techniques and micro-injection. Colombelli, for example, discussed his work on developing highly sophisticated lasers that allow scientists to perform ‘sur-gery’ on cells in order to better understand intracellular mechanisms in vivo.

“Workshops like this one are a great op-portunity for teachers to get into a research lab and work side-by-side with scientists,” says Colombelli. “It’s also interesting for us as scientists because we get to see first-hand the challenges that teachers face in bringing today’s science into the classroom. Though they may not be able to take highly-sophis-ticated equipment back to their schools, they do come out with knowledge, tools, contacts and renewed enthusiasm for science that they can then transmit to their students.”

Teachers work alongside scientists to prepare samples to be looked at under the microscope. Photo: C. Schmelz


06

FACES TO NAMES

Rodrigo Gatica. PhD Student, IRB Barcelona Cell Signalling Group

“The earthquake in Chile has razed to the ground many years of research”

Rodrigo Gatica (Santiago, 1974) came from Chile to IRB Barcelona in 2008 with his hands empty after having lost most of his research data due to a fire in the science fac-ulty at the Austral University where he was finishing his PhD. Although from a distance now, he’s very concerned about the devastat-ing 8.8 magnitude earthquake that recently struck Chile and the setbacks this tragedy will cause in research.

- Have you heard from any researchers in Chile after the earthquake?

“Two friends of mine were working in the Institute of Plant Biology and Biotechnol-ogy in Talca when the massive earthquake hit. Most of the equipment and biologi-cal materials were completely destroyed by the quake, and the failure of emergency generators during the long electricity out-ages just made things worse. They weren’t in the building when it happened, but they are devastated—they have lost most of their research work.”

- Science reported that the worst damage was to the University of Concepción.

“Concepción was the worst place to be be-cause it was very close to the epicenter of the quake. The violent shakes destroyed all the chemicals in the Faculty of Chemistry, thus setting a fire that burned down the whole building. The earthquake in Chile has razed to the ground many years of research.”

- What about the tsunami?

“A researcher friend of mine and her boy-friend, a fireman, were in the town of Con-stitución when the tsunami hit. When I heard

ANNA ALSINA institutions that are normally reliable failed that day. The Chilean Navy’s Oceanographic Service (SHOA), which is responsible for detecting tsunamis, instructed the President of Chile to lift the tsunami warning after the first wave had hit. People went back home thinking that they were no longer in dan-ger, but then several more waves hit. Many people died because of that negligence. The Parliament in Chile is now investigating if those responsible should be prosecuted and even the Navy has asked that the director of SHOA be removed from office.”

- Does being a hot spot for major earth-quakes make people in Chile more prepared for survival?

“People learn about safety instructions on an ongoing basis, even in school, and so they are very well trained for natural disasters.”

- What are the safety instructions for earth-quakes?

“If you’re by the coast and there’s a very strong earthquake where you have difficulty standing up, for instance, you should run in land immediately as it usually only takes ten minutes for a tsunami to hit the coast. If you’re inside a building, you should try to stand on a door threshold or by a column. Once the quake is over you should fill bot-tles with water to be prepared for outages. I remember once meeting a woman who had spent her life storing bottles of water since the great earthquake in 1960. I’ll never for-get her. Living in a country prone to natu-ral disasters makes people more afraid, but tragedies and hard circumstances in life unite people more than ever and make them more supportive and appreciative toward others.”

Rodrigo has a fixation for kidneys. He has spent the last four years of his life analyzing and purifying specific seg-ments of the kidneys to explore what goes wrong during diabetes. “We’re trying to decipher the mechanisms that get activated in the kidneys that may be contributing to the increase of glucose levels.” He says his work has already gained results. His group will soon publish two papers with new findings that will provide more answers to the complex relation between diabetes and the kidneys.

about the 15-meter waves, I was very wor-ried for their safety. I didn’t hear from them until three days later. They had opted to stay in the city to help and rescue people. Half of the deaths in Chile’s earthquake occurred in Constitución.”

- Only four hours after the earthquake the Chilean government stated that the coun-try didn’t yet need international aid.

“There were many technical problems. The Chilean government underestimated the magnitude of the natural disaster, and even

Photo: N

. Noriega

A long trip to the kidneys


07

Meeting the masters

Readers at IRB Barcelona don’t need to leave the Institute prem-ises to borrow

books anymore. The Office of Com-munications and External Relations has recently started a Science and So-ciety library with a growing collec-tion of books and multimedia mate-rials. For a complete list of titles visit the IRB Barcelona intranet.

A new resource for readers

A group of stu-dents and pro-fessors from the ‘Josep Lluís Sert’ secondary school

in Castelldefels spent a day filming the work behind the scenes at IRB Barcelona in February. Their goal was to grasp as much information as possible from researchers to make a video about the contributions of biomedical science to healthcare and society. Their work will be presented in a video contest at the 2010 Euro-Science Open Forum (ESOF), to be held in Torino in July.

Taped by amateur filmmakers

NEWS FROM OUR NEIGHBORS IN THE PARK

IBEC researchers are hard at work develop-ing a bioelectronic ‘nose’, a device they hope

will be able to rapidly and non-invasively detect disease. Some illnesses can alter the composition of organic fluids, like blood and urine, and can change their smell. The BOND project (Bioelec-tronic Olfactory Neuron Device) aims to devel-op an integrated bioelectronic analytical nano-platform based on olfactory receptors to detect volatile odour compounds. Using a combination of micro/nano, bio and information technologies, researchers will develop an ar-ray of smart nanobiosensors to mimic the human nose.

The basis of the nano-bioplatform is the production and manipulation of olfactory receptor proteins expressed in yeast cells. The olfactory nanobiosensor array also in-tegrates elementary nanobiotransducers, each of which consists of a set of functionalized nano-electrodes with an olfactory receptor monolayer anchored on them. The nanoelectrode would be in charge of detecting electrically any confor-

IBEC’s bioelectronic nose to sniff out disease

mational or chemical change in the olfactory receptors when these receptors bind a given odorant molecule.

“We hope that the BOND device will be a big leap forward in the diagnosis and prog-nosis of diseases such as prostate and lung cancer,” says project coordinator Josep Sami-tier. “One of our research lines, in collabora-

tion with hospitals, aims to develop diagnostic tools that will allow us

to detect prostate cancer via a urine sample.”

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is an interdisciplinary re-search center dedicated to creating knowledge and technology transfer in the fields of bioen-gineering and nanomedicine. IBEC engages in basic research and develops applied tech-nologies which aim to improve health and quality of life.

IBEC

Two groups of Masters students from the Gradu-ate School of

Economics and the Pompeu Fabra University’s Masters in Leadership and Management in Science paid separate visits to the Institute in Feb-ruary and March. Their ultimate ob-jective was to get a closer look at the internal workings of the Institute.

IN BRIEF For the second year running

The IRB Barcelona running team took to the streets for the second year running in early

March to compete in the Barcelona city mara-thon. Altogether, the six members of the team clocked up a total of 253.17 kms in a combined 21 hours, 35 minutes and 32 seconds of pound-ing the pavement. That’s about the equivalent of running to the border with France and back.

If crossing the finish line were not motiva-tion enough for these runners, this year they had an additional cause to inspire them. They ran in name of the emergency relief efforts for the re-cent earthquake in Chile (see article on previous page). The donations they collected, added to the amount given by members of the IRB Barce-lona and PCB communities, topped 2000 euros

- which was enough to fund the construction of four temporary homes for families who had been left homeless by the quake.

Thanks to all who ran, gave, and lent their support. Check out photos and videos of the runners in action in the results section of the marathon website (www.barcelonamarato.es).

(Clockwise from top left) IRB Barcelona marathon team Joaquim Calbó, Roman Kessler, Ashraf Muhaisen, Guillermo López, Adelaida Díaz and Jorge Domínguez.


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. Design: Aymerich Comunicació. Printing: Puresa. Graphic Production: La Trama. Legal deposit: B-1729-2010. This document has been printed on recycled paper. To subscribe or unsubscribe from in vivo email [email protected] © IRB Barcelona

www.irbbarcelona.org

Molecular biologist Jelena Urosevic (Serbia, 1977) has recently traded the dry weather in Madrid for the sea. She left the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and joined IRB Barcelona in March to work as a postdoctoral research-er at the MetLab. Her main mission will be to search for the

genes that are involved in colorectal cancer metastasis, a challenge that she looks forward to embracing. She says working with living cells is one of the best parts of her job. Jelena’s passion for science is something built into her. “I’ve been really curious about things my whole life. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to know why things happened one way and not the other. I cannot imagine myself doing something else. Science is my passion.”

The ‘bad cop’ at IRB Barcelona

David Rossell, manager of the IRB Barcelona Bioinformatics/Biostatistics Unit, recently

captured the attention of Science Careers, who de-voted a feature article to his scientific path. Rossell came to IRB Barcelona in 2008 from the United States, where he was working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Biostatistics Department of the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

- Is statistics something you carry around everywhere?

“Sure I do. Maybe not all the time, but with traf-fic for example. I pay a lot of attention to pat-terns like which lane is fastest, in which part, and on which days. The problem is Murphy’s law stands against everything I have studied!”

- What is interacting with biomedical scientists like?

“Most researchers can do their basic numbers, but they benefit from having someone who can go beyond the usual analyses. When we col-laborate in projects our goal is to get more out of the data than they would. Part of our job is to critically assess the evidence provided by the data, which may mean refuting the hypoth-esis that the experimenter is trying to confirm. I guess part of our job is being a bad cop.”

- How did you end up in the biostatistics field?

“The turning point came when I had to decide between training to be a mechanic - I love mo-torcycles - or studying statistics. I ended up choosing the latter path because I had always had a knack with numbers.”

Biologist Anna Vilches (Spain, 1977) has spent her first weeks at IRB Barcelona visiting all the research labora-tories to get familiar with the safety measures. Her main responsibilities as the new Work Safety and Environment Technician will be to carry out risk evaluations in all the working areas, to train IRB Barcelona employees on risk prevention, to coordi-nate annual health check ups, to investigate work accidents, and to provide assis-tance to the Institute’s Health and Safety Committee. “The most rewarding part is to know that your work is helping others to improve their working conditions,” she says. Anna has more than seven years of experience working as a risk assess-ment expert in the chemical industry and in the Catalan government.

Jascha Blobel (Germany, 1978) recently overcame the di-lemma of deciding what to do after having completed his PhD research at IRB Barcelona and opted to make a career move. He left Miquel Pons’ laboratory to step into the private sec-tor and work as a product manager for Intelligent Pharma,

a PCB-based company that offers computational solutions to accelerate research in drug discovery and design. “I wanted to explore how science works in an industrial environment and see from a closer distance the potential of its applications for soci-ety,” he says. He’s now getting used to having regular working hours.

ON THE MOVE

Photo: A

. Alsina

Carme Cortina (Spain, 1981) is leaving IRB Barcelona with an impressive record. Her research work as a PhD student on the tumor suppressor role of EphB receptors made it into Nature Genetics in 2007, when she was still in the middle of her thesis. She joined the Centre of Re-generative Medicine of Barcelona in March, where she will be working as a PhD technician on cell reprogramming, a new research area for her. “Changing fields is really exciting because at the beginning you are always exposed to a storm of new concepts and techniques,” she says.Tanya Yates

In Vivo 10

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