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 evaluated.

They have to constantly justify their

work, strive to defend their ideas, and con-

vince funders that their proposals for research

projects are worthier than

those of their competitors,”

says IRB Barcelona Director

Joan J Guinovart. These gen-

eral thoughts and many other

perspectives on the world of

science were recently cap-

tured 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 (jquintana@pcb.ub.cat)

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 exhibi-tion called ‘ N e u r o n a l Landscapes’, curated by

Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa museum, 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