fitxa premiats academia 2012

Academia Awards 2012 (5th call)

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Awardees (in Alphabetical order)

Area Awardee Univ. Gender

Social & Behav. Sc. Barrantes-Vidal, Neus UAB F

Tech. & Engineer. Bertalmío, Marcelo UPF M

Life & Medical Sc. Bosch i Tubert, Fàtima UAB F

Tech. & Engineer. Cabeza, Luisa F. UdL F

Exp. Sc. & Math. Cacho Lascorz, Isabel UB F

Life & Medical Sc. Campo Güerri, Elías UB M

Social & Behav. Sc. Haeringer, Guillaume G. M. UAB M

Tech. & Engineer. Llobet, Eduard URV M

Exp. Sc. & Math. Luque Garriga, F. Javier UB M

Humanities Martí Henneberg, Jordi UdL M

Humanities Morrill, Glyn UPC M

Life & Medical Sc. Pérez-Jurado, Luis Alberto UPF M

Exp. Sc. & Math. Sales-Pardo, Marta URV F

Total Awardees ICREA Academia 2012: 13

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Awardees (by ICREA Area)
















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Awardees (by University)
















5

Barrantes-Vidal, Neus

Social and Behavioural Sciences

UAB

Short bio

Neus Barrantes-Vidal (Barcelona, 1971) obtained her B.Sc. in Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), where she also obtained her PhD (Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award) in 2000. She conducted a M.Sc. at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and became a Licensed Specialist in Clinical Psychologist in 2008 (Ministry of Science). She was a visiting predoctoral researcher in the University of Oxford. She became an Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology of UAB, where she is the Principal Investigator of the “Person-Environment Interaction in Psychopathology” Research Group (SGR). She holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (USA), and is member of theAdvisory Board of the Spanish Agency for the Assessment of Scientific Research (ANEP).

Research interests

Her interests are the nature and origins of mental disorders. Her group focuses on how psychosocial risk factors, moderated by genetic variation, impact on increasing the risk for developing psychosis, and understanding what psychological mechanisms mediate this risk and/or resilience for disorder onset. Also, they use mobile technologies to map dynamic mental processes and the person-context interplay in real life.

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Bertalmío, Marcelo

Technology and Engineering

UPF

Short bio

Marcelo Bertalmío (Montevideo, 1972) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2001. Since 2006 he is an Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where currently he heads the Graduate Studies commission and is the vice-head of the Information and Communication Technologies Department.

His publications total more than 5,000 citations. He was awarded the 2012 SIAG/IS Prize of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics of the USA (SIAM) for the most relevant image processing work published in the period 2008-2012. He has received the Femlab Prize, the Siemens Best Paper Award and the Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, among other honours. Has an ERC-Starting Grant for his project “Image processing for enhanced cinematography”.

Research interests

I'm working in developing image processing algorithms allowing to shoot cinema with no more artificial lighting than what people present at the scene need to be able to see. We will work out software methods mimicking neural processes in the Human Visual System, and apply them to images captured with a regular digital movie camera.

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Bosch i Tubert, Fàtima

Life and Medical Sciences

UAB

Short bio

Fatima Bosch is a Pharmacist (1980) and PhD in Biochemistry (1985) by the University of Barcelona. She conducted post-doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University (1985), Case Western Reserve University(1988-1990), and NCI-Frederick Cancer Research and Development Centre (1991).She is currently Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1999) and Director of the Centre of Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy (2003) at the Universitat Autònoma Barcelona. She has been granted the Rey Juan Carlos I (1985), Francisco Grande Covián (1998), Narcís Monturiol(2002), Sant Jordi Cross (2005) and Alberto Sols(2006) awards. She has been Founding member of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (1992), President of the Spanish Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (2007-2009) and Vice-President of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (2009-2012).

Research interests

Her research focuses on studying the pathophysiological causes of diabetes mellitus using transgenic animal models and developing gene therapy approaches to this disease by in vivo genetic manipulation of tissues. Recently, she has applied her know-how on gene transfer technologiesto the development of gene therapies for inherited metabolic disorders such as Muccopolysaccharidoses.

8

Cabeza, Luisa F.


UdL

Short bio

Luisa F. Cabeza (Barcelona, 1967) is Full Professor of the program Serra Húnter at the University of Lleida. She graduated at Institut Químic de Sarrià (Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona) on Chemical Engineering in 1992 and on Industrial Engineering in 1993, obtained the Master on Industrial Management in 1995, and her PhD on Industrial Engineering in 1996. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the USDA, ERRC in Philadelphia from 1996 to 1998, and in 1999 she joined the University of Lleida were she created the research group GREA. She has authored more than 100 peer reviewed publications and several book chapters. She is very active in different international forums such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the RHC Renewable Heating & Cooling - European Technology Platform.

Research interests

Her research interests are focused in energy efficiency and renewable systems. Currently, she is focused mainly in thermal energy storage, from materials to systems and applications, with big interest in the environmental point of view, including embodied energy and CO2 mitigation considerations.

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Cacho Lascorz, Isabel

Experimental Sciences and Mathematics

UB

Short bio

Isabel Cacho (Barbastro, 1969) is Senior Lecture (Professora Agregada) in the Universitat de Barcelona since 2008. She graduated in Geology in 1992 in the UB and performed her PhD (2000) in paleo-oceanography between the CID-CSIC and the UB. She was affiliated to the University of Cambridge as a post-doctoral researcher from 2000 to 2003 in the laboratory from Dr. Sir Nick Shackleton. She was a fellow of the US-COMER Foundation during 2004 and associated to the Columbia University. She was contracted as a Ramon y Cajal researcher by the University of Barcelona from 2004-2008.

Research interests

She works in the study of past climate variability based mostly in the analysis of marine archives like deep marine sediments but also terrestrial archives like spelothems from caves. She is specialist in some geochemical tracers (stable isotopes, trace elements) which are indicators of different environmental variables. She has a strong background studying the impact in the Mediterranean region of past rapid climate variability associated to events of polar ice sheet instability. She has also worked in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific at different timescales evaluating the impact of ocean and atmospheric tele-connections between high and low latitudes during times of major climate transitions. Cacho has written more than 50 publications in major peer reviewed journals which have received more than 2000 citations.

10

Campo Güerri, Elías


UB

Short bio

Elías Campo received his MD and PhD degrees from the Medical School at the University of Barcelona. After his residency in Pathology at the Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, he conducted a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular pathology at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD. He joined the Laboratory of Pathology at the Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona, where he became Professor of Anatomic Pathology and Chief of the Hematopathology Unit. He is currently the Research Director of the Hospital Clinic. He is member of the Steering Committee of the WHO Classification of the Hematopoietic Neoplasms and was Director of the Spanish Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Genome Project. He has published more than 400 scientific articles and has received several awards including the Josep Trueta from the Catalan Academy of Medical Sciences, Narcís Monturiol Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Severo Ochoa. He serves as member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several institutions, Associate Editor of Haematologica and currently is President of the European Association for Haematopathology.

Research interests

His research is focused on the pathological characterization of lymphoid neoplasms and the molecular and genetic mechanisms involved in the development and progression of these tumours and the clinical translation of this knowledge. His research is founded by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, the USA National Cancer Institute, The USA Lymphoma Research Foundation, and the European Union.

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Haeringer, Guillaume G. M.

Social and Behavioural Sciences

UAB

Short bio

Guillaume Haeringer was born in 1972. He received his undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from the University of Strasbourg (France), a Master degree and in economics from the University of Strasbourg in 1995 and a PhD in economics from University of Strasbourg in 2000. After finishing his PhD he moved to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona for a postdoc with a Marie Curie fellowship. In 2001-2002 he was lecturer at the University of Warwick, and from 2002 to 2007 he was a Ramón y Cajal fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Since 2011 he is Professor Titular at the Departament d’Economia i Història econòmica at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Research interests

Guillaume Haeringer’s broad research interest is microeconomics and economic theory, but his main area of research is matching theory and market design. Most of Guillaume Haeringer’s current research deals with the design of mechanisms to assigning students to schools. More recently, his research started to focus on the empirical evaluation of matching mechanisms and the design of school assignment policies.

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Llobet, Eduard


URV

Short bio

Eduard Llobet (Barcelona, 1967) is a full professor at the Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, where he obtained a tenured position in 1996. He was awarded a PhD in Telecom Eng in 1997 from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and then joined the Gas Sensor Lab (UWarwick, UK) for a one-year postdoc. In 2006, he was an invited researcher at the CNRS-IMS in Bordeaux (France). From 2010 he has been Director of the Research Centre on Engineering of Materials and micro/nano Systems. He has co-authored some 150 papers at peer-reviewed journals (over 2900 citations), 8 book chapters and 5 patents. He has led 22 national and international projects funded by public bodies under competitive calls and participated in 12 projects funded by industry. He serves on the scientific committees of the major world conferences on sensors and has presented over 15 invited lectures. An expert evaluator for different research agencies throughout Europe, he belongs to the IEEE, RSC, ISOCS and the American Nano Society. In 2012 he received the URV's RQR Award for quality in research.

Research interests

He is currently addressing the fabrication of sensor arrays employing low-dimensional metal oxides and carbon nanomaterials. Cost-effective and industrially scalable methods are considered for bottom-up integration in MEMS or flexible platforms. The applications sought are (i) sensitive and selective gas microsensors for environmental monitoring, medicine or safety and (ii) heterogeneous catalysis. Advanced characterisation and modelling techniques are used to understand the materials in depth, to gain insight into gas sensing, catalytic properties and mechanisms, and finally to establish structure-performance relationships.

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Luque Garriga, F. Javier


UB

Short bio

F. Javier Luque (1962) obtained his degree in Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1985 and his PhD in Chemistry from the same university in 1989. His scientific career involved post-doctoral periods at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (1992), University of Pisa (1995) and University of Nancy (1998), where he was invited professor in 1999. In 1991 he was appointed assistant professor at the University of Barcelona, where he got a full professor position in 2003. In 2002 he was awarded with the Catalan Distinction for the Promotion of University Research for Young Scientists. He is leading the Computational Biology and Drug Design group in the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Barcelona. He is co-author of more than 300 scientific publications and has supervised 15 PhD theses.

Research interests

The main focus of his research is the study of biomolecular systems using the theoretical and computational methods of quantum chemistry, classical simulation and molecular modelling. Special emphasis is made on the structure-dynamics-function relationships in proteins, the molecular determinants of biomolecular association and the design of novel bioactive compounds, specifically in drug discovery.

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Martí Henneberg, Jordi

Humanities

UdL

Short bio

Born in Reus in 1959, I graduated in History and Geography and did my PhD at the University of Barcelona under the supervision of Dr Horacio Capel. I obtained a research grant from the University of Lausanne (1984 – 1986) and I was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (in 2006 and 2011). I am currently Professor of Human Geography at the University of Lleida where I have taught since 1990. I am currently leading several research projects, most of which are funded by the European Union, with one of particular interest focusing on the Teaching of European Integration in Secondary Schools.

Research interests

I aim to improve our knowledge and understanding of Europe from the mid-19th century until the present day from a geographical perspective. To do this, together with my team and other associated groups, I have established a georeferenced database that includes changes in regional boundaries, population density, regional GDP and transport infrastructures. This involves using different scales, ranging from the European to the very detailed level of the municipality, and working with data collected from the census series of each country.

15

Morrill, Glyn

Humanities

UPC

Short bio

Glyn Morrill received his degree in Computer Science from Cambridge in 1984 and his MSc and PhD in Cognitive Science from Edinburgh in 1985 and 1988. After researching at Edinburgh, Amsterdam/Utrecht and Barcelona, he started lecturing at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in 1993. He became TU in 1997 and received the habilitation for CU in 2012. His books are Type Logical Grammar: Categorial Logic of Signs (Kluwer Academic Press, 1994), Lògica de primer ordre (Edicions UPC, 2001) and Categorial Grammar: Logical Syntax, Semantics and Processing (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Research interests

Glyn Morrill's research interests lie in the application of mathematical logic to the analysis of the syntax and semantics of natural language, and in the associated computational linguistic models of language processing (grammar as logic and parsing as deduction). Such categorial grammar received a splendid technical foundation in Lambek's (1958) `The mathematics of sentence structure', but this calculus is limited in its capacity to express discontinuity, the central challenge of natural grammar. In Morrill, Valentín and Fadda (2011) 'The displacement calculus' he and his students aspired to refound categorial grammar accommodating discontinuity. He is currently exploring this development with a parser/theorem-proverCatLog.

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Pérez-Jurado, Luis Alberto


UPF

Short bio

Luis A. Pérez-Jurado is Full Professor of Genetics at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) where he is leading the Genetics Unit and directs the Master Program in Genetic Counseling. He is also Coordinator of Training at the National Network Centre for Biomedical Research on Rare diseases (CIBERER). He graduated in Medicine and got a Ph.D. degree in Human Genetics at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid (1983/1991). He holds the specialties of Family Practice (Hospital Clínico, Granada, 1987), Pediatrics (Hospital Niño Jesús, Madrid, 1991), and Clinical and Molecular Genetics (Vanderbilt and Stanford Universities, TN & CA, USA, 1996). He has then been staff physician and investigator in Genetics at the Hospitals Niño Jesús and La Paz (both in Madrid), before moving to Barcelona where he also had appointments with the Hospitals del Mar (2000-2006) and Vall d’Hebron (2006-2009).

Research interests

His lab has been mainly involved in the study of the molecular basis of neurodevelopmental disorders, integrating clinical and molecular research with animal models in order to bridge genes with cognition and provide diagnostic tools. He also studies genomic structural variation, including mutational mechanisms of somatic and germ cells and their implication in disease susceptibility.

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Sales-Pardo, Marta


URV

Short bio

Dr. Sales-Pardo (Barcelona, 1976) graduated in Physics at Universitat de Barcelona in 1998 and obtained her PhD in physics of disordered systems in 2002 at Universitat de Barcelona. She performed her postdoctoral work at Northwestern University (USA) where she occupied different positions. First as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as a Fulbright Scholar at the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and finally as a Research Assistant Professor with joint appointments at the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and the Northwestern Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Since 2009 she is Professora Agregada at Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Research interests

Dr. Sales-Pardo is interested in the analysis and modelling of complex systems with an emphasis on biological systems. Her approach relies on techniques borrowed from statistical mechanics, statistical learning and inference and complex networks analysis to study complex systems from a systems point of view. She is also interested in the development of new methodologies to extract, infer and predict information from empirical datasets.