Tag: PhD

Some of the members of the N&N Group at the JIPI conference in Barcelona

Written by Anna May on February 9, 2017. Posted in Conferences, News.

Today at the Paranimf of the Universitat de Barcelona there is the “Jornada d’Investigadors Predoctorals Interdisciplinària” (JIPI) -Interdisciplinary Meeting of Predoctoral Researchers-, from 8.30 am to 8 pm.

The JIPI is a meeting point for PhD researchers in Catalonia, where they can present their work and meet researchers of different fields.

Apart from the flash talks, divided in different topics (Applied sciences, Social sciences, Life sciences and Humanities), and given by 1, 2 or 3 speakers together, the attendees can participate in a speed-networking session, and in interesting debates. The topics of the debates of this year are “Women in research”, “Doctors and the private sector” and “Education in science”.

Irene, Ma Zheng, Sole, Júlia, Pengmei Yu and Alex

Irene Anton, Sole Roig and Ma Zheng from the N&N Group have attented the conference. From ICMAB, Júlia Jareño and Alexander Stangl, who presented the talk “Hot future for cold superconductors”, won the award of their session. Congrats!

Ma, Sole and Irene sitting in the left-background.

You can follow the #JIPI2017 activities on twitter at @jipi_bcn and see the abstracts of the flash-talks and more information at their webpage and facebook page.

INPhINIT “La Caixa” Fellowship Programme – Opportunities at ICMAB-CSIC within the NN Group

Written by Anna May on January 9, 2017. Posted in News, Projects News.

INPhINIT is a new doctoral fellowship programme promoted by “la Caixa” Foundation devoted to attract international Early-Stage Researchers to the top Spanish research centres in the areas of Bio and Health Sciences, Physics, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

INPhINIT recruits per call 57 Early-Stage Researchers of any nationality, who enjoy a 3-year employment contract at the Research Centre of their choice among those selected and awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (“Severo Ochoa” centres of excellence and “Maria de Maeztu” units of excellence) and the Spanish Ministry of Health (“Carlos III centres of excellence”).

ICMAB-CSIC is one of the “Severo Ochoa” centers selected, and has published 24 PhD open positions under the INPhINIT programme.

One of this projects is offered by Anna Roig and Martí Gich, within the NN Group, and is entitled “Mesoporous Magnetic Nanorods for Theranostics”:

The project aims at developing high aspect ratio magnetic silica-based materials as multimodal agents for theranostic purposes. The targeted materials are mesoporous silica rods containing inorganic nanoparticles to serve as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography and at the same time encapsulating selected drugs. The project aims at demonstrating that engineered magnetic objects in the rod shape can constitute a new family of carriers for therapeutic agents with radically new properties and advantages compared to the magnetic nanoparticles used so far.

Application deadline: 2 Februrary 2017

More information:

Laura González will defend her Doctoral Thesis on Friday, December 16th at 12 pm at ICMAB

Written by Anna May on December 14, 2016. Posted in General News, News, Projects News.

This Friday 16th of December Laura González is going to defend her Doctoral Thesis entitled “Evaluating inorganic nanoparticles in the living organism Caenorhabditis elegans”, supervised by Dr. Anna Laromaine and Dr. Anna Roig.

Abstract:
In this thesis, we have used the simple model organism Caenorhabditis elegans as an in vivo biological system to screen inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) with biomedical uses. In particular, we have assessed the behaviour of two types of particles with different composition, size and surface properties: iron oxide NPs coated with citrate and bovine serum albumin, and gold nanoparticles of two different sizes. We have studied their interactions with C. elegans including their uptake, fate, biological effects and NP-responsive molecular mechanisms, and compared our results with previous studies. To this end, we have combined toxicity tests, materials science and imaging techniques and gene expression analysis. We have been able to perform this biological evaluation in the synthetic laboratory where the particles were synthesized and characterised due to the advantageous experiments features of C. elegans.In summary, this thesis exploits the potential of C. elegans as a simple animal model to evaluate NPs in the initial stages of development and contributes to: (i) a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of NPs in C. elegans, in particular studying the influence of NP properties (size, surface coating and core composition) on their in vivo effects, (ii) extend the toolkit of techniques available to characterise nano-bio interactions in small organisms.

The Jury Members will be:

President: Dr. Maria Vallet-Regí (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Secretary: Dr. Stefaan Soenen (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Vocal: Dr. Joel N. Meyer (Duke University, USA)

Everyone is invited to join the presentation, that will be held at 12 pm at ICMAB Conference Room Carles Miravitlles. After the defense, there will be a “pica-pica” for everyone in the dining room.