3rd IRB Barcelona PhD Students’ Retreat

James Sharpe was originally captivated by computer programming, and later at Oxford University he saw the mystery of multicellular development as even more amazing: How the circuitry of gene regulation vaguely resembles electronic control circuits, but with a totally distributed control system (every cell containing the same genome, and thus the same circuit). He then trained as an experimental developmental biologist (PhD at NIMR London), moved to Edinburgh (MRC HGU) to start developing computer models of limb development (1997), invented a new 3D optical imaging technique called Optical Projection Tomography, and in 2006 moved to the CRG (Barcelona) to pursue a systems biology approach to organogenesis - integrating experimentation, imaging and computer modeling. He has recently been appointed as Head of EMBL Barcelona.

Maria did her PhD at the Instituto de investigaciones Biomédicas "Alberto Sols" (IIB) with Dr. Ignacio Palmero. She, then, started  a postdoc in the laboratory of Dr.Manuel Serrano at Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO) of Madrid. There, she developed the first mouse model of in vivo reprogramming, for which she obtained the "Notable Advance of Year" prize of Nature Medicine. A second Postdocs send her to Texas where she worked with Prof.Enric N.Olson at the UT Southwestern Medical Center. There, she studied the role of Notch pathway in cardiac reprogramming. Since 2016 she leads a group at Vall d'Hebron Institut d'Oncologia (VHIO) in the field of Cellulr plasticity and Cancer. Her research is foscused on studying cellular plasticity and stemness as targets for anticancer therapy. She is also interested in elucidating the impact of tumorogenesis in vivo reprogramming. 

Estrella began her ‘scientific odyssey’ at the University of Navarra, Spain, where she gained a PhD in Genetic Toxicology. She went for a post-doctoral year to Astra Zeneca in UK. After she joined Almirall as a Clinical Research Scientist, and she has amassed a 26 year career, always in the Clinical Development Arena. Estrella is responsible for clinical trials worldwide, from Phase I to Phase IV.As strategic decision, she does full externalizes all clinical trials, with a strategic focus on keeping only core competencies in house and measuring the delivery of the strategic partner by means if KPIs and quality of the deliverables. In this capacity Estrella has worked with dozens of CROs and service providers, in different therapeutical areas, and now fully focus on Dermatology.

Xavier began 32 years ago in the Pharma Industry in a commercial area. After a short period of time moved to an International small pharma company in Barcelona were he had the opportunity to touch many disciplines related to the medical science and business development. That together with his MBA allow him to join Almirall in 1993 in Project Management function. In 1997 after the merger with another very big Spanish pharma company took over the role of head of Regulatory Affairs. That was the first step for making a real multinational company with many medicines commercialized in more than 80 countries worldwide.

Matthew earned his PhD in the barren lands of the American Midwest at The Ohio State University in molecular neurobiology: His research investigated molecular mechanisms of gene regulation in neural development and disease.,Matthew is a former European Research Council Marie Curie Sklodowska Individual Fellow. Dr: Murtha began stand up comedy in 2016 and was a finalist in the 2017 Barcelona Comedy Festival. He has performed across the world in cities such as NYC, London, Paris and Barcelona.