GRIB informs that from this year the Research Group on Biomedical Informatics of IMIM/UPF has passed of to be considered a group to a unit due to the increase of personnel and to the increment of its laboratories, from now on denominated groups.
The Research Unit on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) of the Institut Municipal d’Investigació Mèdica (IMIM) coordinates the only European Network of Excellence granted to Catalonia and endowed with a budget of 5 million euros. This network, called “Structuring European Biomedical Informatics to Support Individualised Healthcare (INFOBIOMED)”, is funded by the European Commission within the VI Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (RTD).
Dr. Mestres will be joining the IMIM from Organon where he served as Head of the Computational Medicinal Chemistry group (2000-2003, Newhouse, UK) and as Research Scientist in the Molecular Design and Informatics group (1997-2000, Oss, The Netherlands).
The Quality Certificate was awarded by the General Secretary of Industry of the Catalan Government during the IV Annual Meeting of Technology and Knowledge Transfer Networks, hosted by CIDEM on the 27th of May in the World Trade Center of Barcelona.
Dr. Roderic Guigó, Head of the Genome Bioinformatics Laboratory at the GRIB, has been honoured with the Ciutat de Barcelona Award to the Scientific Research. This prize has been granted for his research in bioinformatics, such as the comparative analysis of complex genomes, like the mouse and the mosquito Anopheles gambiae.
The sequence and analysis of more than 95 percent of the mouse genome is published for the first time in current edition of Nature. In addition to revealing 9000 new mouse genes, the research papers reveal 1200 new human genes, a significant number of which are likely to be involved in cancers and other diseases. These findings will allow researchers to home in more rapidly on genes in order to better diagnose and treat many human diseases
Project SMARTIE, "Smart Medical Applications Repository of Tools for Informed Expert Decision" funded by the European Commission IST program was rewarded with the finalist award of the 2002 Stockholm Challenge Award in the category "Health" out of 62 registered projects. The project received the prize at the venue of the Nobel Banquet.