Participants
Contact
The annual Werfen-Izasa-Beckman prize awarded by the Spanish Biophysics Society (acronym SBE in Spanish) in recognition of work on biophysics done by scientists under 40 in Spain has fallen on the ICREA researcher Xavier Salvatella, at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). Salvatella will receive his award during the XIII SBE Congress in Valencia in June. Founded in 1987, the SBE seeks to promote the development of biophysics in Spain and to boost investigation and education in this field.
The 2013 prize has been granted to Salvatella for his studies —performed in the Molecular Biophysics Lab— on the molecular mechanisms that govern conformational changes in proteins. Proteins are the main perpetrators of almost all vital body functions, and this team of scientists seeks to unveil how these proteins communicate between them. Through a combination of NMR experiments and computational modelling, Salvatella’s lab addresses the development of methods to probe the fluctuations in the structures of these molecules and how changes in this movement relate to disease.
About IRB Barcelona
The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to cure cancer and other diseases linked to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society, and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 researchers and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).
