Dec 18, 2014
Proteus diagnostics awarded in Tarragona Smart City
Proteus Diagnostics, an initiative of ATIC technology innovation centre and the INTERFIBIO research team of the Department of Chemical Engineering (DEQ) of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), has been awarded with the first prize in its category (Energy Efficiency, Sustainability and Technology) in the awards “Empresa Tarragona Smart City” organized by the municipality of Tarragona and the organization “Tarragona Impulsa”. The entrepreneurship Chair of the URV supported the effort, led by Dr. Ángel González, researcher of DEQ and in which participate other researchers of the team, URV and ICREA. The private company, that is hoped to be formed before the end of 2014, will have as objective the development and commercialization of veterinary and human diagnostic tools.
Nov 08, 2014
Tarragona International Forward Osmosis Workshop (TIFOW 2014).
On December 11 and 12, 2014, the International Forward Osmosis Workshop (TIFOW 2014) will be held in Tarragona. This will be a great moment to learn and exchange knowledge about Forward Osmosis. The registration in the workshop is free and has to be done by sending an email to josep.montornes@ctqc.org. Anyone that likes to give one oral presentation in the afternoon session should attach a one page abstract describing the work to be presented. The deadline for presentations proposals is November 21st 2014. There will be an answer about the presentation within one week, deadline Nov 28th. Please, find more information in the linked document. Hope to see you there!
Sep 17, 2014
Opening academic year 14-15
During the inauguration ceremony of the academic year 2014-15 at the URV held yesterday, the members of our PDI Dr. Joan R. Alabart, Dra. Magda Constantí and Dr. John Herrero, and Pilar Obón member of the PAS were recognized for their 25 years of dedication to the university. Most of these 25 years, if not all, have been dedicated to serve to our department. Likewise, Dr. Francesc Medina was recognized as a distinguished professor at the URV due to their merits in teaching and research. Last but not least, Dr. Gustavo A. Orozco and Dr. Brisa M. Peña received the doctoral thesis award of the past year, earned for their high scientific production during the course of the thesis project. Congratulations to all them.
Aug 28, 2014
ELECTROSPRAY TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Joan Rosell-Llompart, ICREA research professor at our department has given a tutorial on ELECTROSPRAY TECHNOLOGY at the INTERNATIONAL AEROSOL CONFERENCE in Busan, South Korea, on Aug. 28th. Aerosols are particulate suspensions in air (or a gas), such as smoke, dust, haze, fog, but also industrially useful aerosols used for making special coatings and particles. Electrosprays are fine droplet dispersions which are produced when a liquid drop is strongly electrified. The IAC is organized once every four years, and it is the lead congress on the Science and Engineering of aerosols. This will be one of four tutorials at this year's IAC, reserved for worldwide recognized researchers in this area.
Jul 10, 2014
2nd Congress on Science and Technology of aerosols, RICTA 2014
Experts from Spain and Portugal have gathered in the Campus Catalonia URV to discuss aerosols and the effects of particles in the measurement environment and people.
From Monday 7th to Wednesday 9th has taken place in the URV the 2nd Iberian Meeting on aerosol science and technology. At the meeting have been discussions on scientific and technological progress in research on aerosols, especially for the scientific community in Portugal and Spain.
May 29, 2014
3d Workshop on biomaterials and their interactions with biological and model membranes 2014
Meeting Softmap Program
http://meeting.softmat.net/program/
which will be held at the hotel Magnolia****, Salou (Costa Dorada), Spain, 31 May - 3 June 2014
The meeting is organized within the scope of EU funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network Smart Nano-objects for Alteration of Lipid bilayers (SNAL) http://itn-snal.net/
First day (31 May) of the meeting is reserved for the management kick-off meeting for participants of the project. 1-3 June is a regular scientific workshop.
This meeting follows up the 1st Workshop held in Salou 19-23 September 2011 and 2nd Workshop 24-26 February 2013. The selected contributions to the meeting may be published in the web themed issue "Interaction of nano-objects with lipid membranes" in Soft Matter journal(http://rsc.li/P846Qr/ ).
The general topic of the meeting is the interaction of synthetic
polymers, nanoparticles, surfactants, proteins, small biomolecules with biological and model phospholipid membranes (check our web site).
Leading scientists and experts from biology, chemistry, physics,
engineering and industry will participate in the meeting to give it a true multidisciplinary environment.
Apr 01, 2014
The SEES:lab group develops a tool that allows for the prediction of conflicts within the work team.
The SEES:lab group of the ETSEQ-URV has developed a tool that allows for the analysis of complex networks (those formed by interactions between units in a system) and the prediction of their behaviour. This tool can be applied to both socio-economic problems and biological ones. The application allows us to anticipate team conflicts but, likewise, it can identify incompatibilities between medicines, in an easy, quick way.
Apr 01, 2014
Roger Guimerà receives the Young Scientist Award for Socio and Econophysics 2014
Roger Guimerà, ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in Tarragona, Catalonia, is this year's recipient of the "Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics" of the German Physical Society (DPG). The Prize, endowed with 5000 euros, recognizes outstanding original contributions by a scientist under 40 that uses physical methods to gain a better understanding of socio-economic problems, and is among the most prestigious prizes in the world in this field.
Guimerà's research is devoted to the study of complex systems, from cells to ecosystems and societies, whose behavior is the outcome of the interactions between many elements. In particular, the focus of his research has been on the intricate networks of interactions between such elements–networks of interactions between proteins within cells, of who-eats-whom interactions in ecosystems, or friendship networks in society.
Some of Guimerà's most recent studies revolve around the idea of using network analysis predictively. In a recent study, Guimerà and his coworker Marta Sales-Pardo set out to investigate whether it is possible to build a robot able to predict the decisions of US Supreme Court justices. Unlike previous studies, the robot they designed did not know anything about the law or the cases on which it had to make predictions; rather, it predicted the vote of one justice from the vote of the others in the same case, as well as the voting record of the Court. Strikingly, they found that such a robot is more accurate at predicting votes than human legal experts who have all the relevant information on the cases–the information hidden in the network of past decisions is, indeed, powerful.
The potential applications of the tools from mathematics and physics that Guimerà has used to predict decisions of the Supreme Court are as diverse as surprising. Together with his collaborators, he has been able to show that it is possible to predict which members of a work team are more likely to develop conflictive relationships (joint work with Núria Rovira, Marta Sales-Pardo, and Tània Gumí), or to predict whether someone will like a movie before they actually watch it (joint work with Marta Sales-Pardo, Alejandro Llorente, and Esteban Moro). And the applications go beyond the social sciences and into biology and medicine–the same methods are also useful to predict which combinations of drugs may result in harmful side effects (joint work with Marta Sales-Pardo).
Guimerà has made important methodological contributions which have been highlighted by the Award Committee: "His methodological contributions include module identification and the prediction of missing links, which is of growing importance in Big Data." His ability to apply these tools to a broad range of problems has also been recognized by the Committee: "Guimera's research is method-oriented, but always inspired if not driven by specific networks in a broad interdisciplinary range: from transportation networks, over metabolic networks, to social networks."
The prize will be awarded today in Dresden, during the spring meeting of the German Physical Society. The awardee will give an invited address on his research.
Short bio
Roger Guimerà was born in Barcelona in 1976, graduated in Physics at Universitat de Barcelona in 1998, and obtained a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Universitat Rovira i Virgili in 2003. He then moved to Northwestern University where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow, as a Fulbright Scholar, and as a Research Assistant Professor. Since 2010, he is ICREA Research Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering of Universitat Rovira i Virgili, where he co-directs the SEES Lab together with Marta Sales-Pardo. Prior to this award, he has received the Premi Nacional de Recerca al Talent Jove from the Catalan Government (2010), and the Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science from the Network Science Society (2012).
Further information
- On Roger Guimerà's research: http://seeslab.info
- On the prize: http://www.dpg-physik.de/dpg/gliederung/fv/soe/YSA/preistraeger_YSA.html
Mar 25, 2014
Conference "Salmonella in the meat production chain"
On April 9th, the technology company iMicroQ organizes the conference "Salmonella in the meat production chain". On that day, iMicroQ presents QFAST a Salmonella rapid detection kit , developed over the last four years in their laboratories and ready to be marketed. The company grew out of an initiative by different researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering as part of the Center for innovation in Biotechnology DYNAMIC (now part of ATIC) of the Rovira i Virgili University and is a clear example of how the university can generate innovative high value products to face society needs. More info at iMicroQ site(http://www.imicroq.com/jornadasalmonella2014-2/).
Mar 25, 2014
3rd Workshop on biomaterials and their interactions with biological and model membranes 2014.
The 3rd Workshop on biomaterials and their interactions with biological and model membranes 2014 (http://meeting.softmat.net/) will be held at the hotel Magnolia****, Salou (Costa Dorada), Spain, 31 May - 3 June 2014
The meeting is organized within the scope of EU funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) "Smart Nano-objects for Alteration of Lipid bilayers (SNAL)" http://itn-snal.net/.
First day (31 May) of the meeting is reserved for the management kick-off meeting for participants of the project. 1-3 June is a regular scientific workshop.
This meeting follows up the 1st Workshop held in Salou 19-23 September 2011 and 2nd Workshop 24-26 February 2013. The selected contributions to the meeting may be published in the web themed issue "Interaction of nano-objects with lipid membranes" in Soft Matter http://rsc.li/P846Qr.
The general topic of the meeting is the interaction of synthetic
polymers, nanoparticles, surfactants, proteins, small biomolecules with biological and model phospholipid membranes (check our web site). Leading scientists and experts from biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and industry will participate in the meeting to give it a true multidisciplinary environment.
