On the 19th of July of 2017, the second internal call of the Frontier Interdisciplinary Projects (FIP) within the FUNMAT Severo Ochoa program was resolved with very good news for the N&N group! Two researcher from the group, Anna Roig and Martí Gich, will participate in two of the eight awarded projects:
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.
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.
Today and tomorrow (November 21-22) we have at ICMAB the members of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Severo-Ochoa program, formed by internationally highly recognised researchers.
For this reason, this morning the coordinators of each Research Line have presented the main highlights, objectives and future perspectives of each Research Line. In the afternoon, the SAB members, guided by a PhD Student, had the opportunity to learn about the on-going research of each Research Group, with the help of the dedicated posters.
Our group had four posters on show:
Bacterial cellulose, a biopolymer with a myriad of potential applications
Evaluating inorganic nanoparticles in vivo on Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans)
Nanomaterials designed for pro-angiogenic therapies aimed at neurorepair after a stroke
