ICREA research professors Xavier Trepat at IBEC and Salvador Aznar Benitah at IRB Barcelona –both centers based at the Barcelona Science Park, have been elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Each year, EMBO, which has a membership of 1,800, selects new scientists to join its ranks. Of the 62 researchers from 24 countries to receive membership this year, Xavier and Salvador are are the only two  researchers from Spain.

The Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics group leader Xaviert Trepat is IBEC’s first full EMBO Member, and one of just 79 based in Spain. One of the youngest researchers in the Generalitat’s prestigious ICREA Senior programme, Xavier, who’s also an Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona, is the one of the very few researchers in Europe ever to be awarded three grants from the European Research Council (ERC). He’s also one of the few researchers to ever publish his work as main author in five Naturefamily journals, namely Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, and Nature Cell Biology.

The diversity of these journals captures the broad spectrum of topics in his lab, which aims to understand the physical mechanisms in biology via basic research and translating the results to the clinic, the market and society. He has developed and patented different technologies to measure cellular properties at the micro- and nanoscales. 

Aznar Benitah, head of the Stem Cells and Cancer lab at IRB Barcelona, ocuses on two main lines of research. His lab addresses the relation between stem cells, circadian rhythm and ageing. In this regard, some of his most recent findings were published in two articles in the journal Cell in 2017. The other line of research centres on the relation between metastasis-initiating cells and dietary fat. Thanks to results published in Nature at the end of 2016, Aznar Benitah has recently been awarded a 2018  ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council worth €2.5 M to continue this research. 

At IRB Barcelona, in addition to Aznar Benitah, IRB’s EMBO membership is held by Ferran Azorín, Jordi Casanova, Miquel Coll, Cayetano González, Núria López-Bigas, Raúl Méndez, Angel. R. Nebreda and Manuel Serrano. 
 

► EMBO press release [+info]