Group

Nurturing Science

By Dani|2010-09-08T18:44:10+00:00September 8, 2010|Group, Teaching|

Coming back from vacations is never easy, and it is even worst in science. A lot of project proposals and articles to be written and conferences to be improved piled up in your laptop and you did not have the time to finnish even half of them. What is worst, that turn in your research you wanted time to think about didn’t come out as expected. Indeed, taking strong and deeply thought decisions is not an easy task while supervising your 6 to 11 years old kids in a rocky beach in the Costa Brava, climbing a Pyrenees mountain or enjoying a foam party in Vilamaniscle.

So fresh air is always welcome and I found it (as most good science) by chance at Uri Alon’s site. Afterwards (as happens also with most good science, unfortunately…) I realized his paper on “How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem” was extremely highly read. His “Materials for Nurturing Science” have started producing in me a similar effect as the reading of some Feynman’s lectures produced years ago, when a PhD student in Lluch’s and González-Lafont lab. Pessimistic views were (and periodically are) collapsing into what Alon refers as “the cloud”. But some readings and talks (veeeery few) lead us again to the right track, the one that was not initially drawn into our particular history. The wall, that I call sometimes (sorry, link in catalan). At any rate, spending some time having a look at Uri’s “Materials…” is an excellent therapy for the type of people that always reject any type of therapy: scientists…

Anyway, I think reading Uri’s paper and having some time to see his videos is an excellent start for any new PhD student or postdoctoral researcher in my lab, so here are the links for you, if you are thinking on spending the best years of your scientific career (and who knows if also of your life) at the CBBL.

Welcome to the new CBBL site

By Dani|2026-09-01T09:40:47+00:00March 17, 2010|Group, Research, Teaching, Technology transfer|

The new CBBL site is designed to provide easier acces to information and in a more dynamical way. After having developed group web sites since my PhD time in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, I have gone through the more or less standard process for a (semi-)advanced user: raw HTML pages, small CGI scripting, PHP/MySQL, Plone and…. coming back to a more reasonable approach using the WordPress PHPH/MySQL based system. I am quite happy with this new approach, as it allows concentrating on the content and not on the technicalities. We’ll see how long it takes to get sick of it, a quite common feature of this who writes.

Using the Blog capabilities of the new CBBL site, I’ll try to make a sense of my view of understanding research when other duties allow me to spend some minutes here. As publicly paid staff, researchers are not free to deliver results in the pace and with the global interest we wish, but the ones that the society deserves. In my view, in the same way we are eager to push ourselves to publish more and better every day, such publications should carry information not just important for our ego, but for the society as a whole. That is why we feel sad when a given article, in which we put so much efforts for so long, is after publication forgotten in a obscure library, be analogical or digital. The interest in publishing with high impact should not be seen as an end by itself, but the constant checking of the pace our publications are quoted by others and influence their work is critical.

Research, however, is “just” one of the three legs of our work as teaching staff in public institutions. The other two, teaching and technology transfer, are at least at the same level, in my view. Thus, the CBBL participates with interest in the teaching of several courses and in transferring technology to the commercial world, in order to give back to the society part of the resources we receive.

Last, but not least, researchers are requested to be critical in any part of their work, with themselves and with others. I’ll try not to betray this maxima and be as caustic as politeness allow. Unfortunately, my English is not as good as my native language Catalan and my Spanish, so other non-scientific opinions will be sent to other personal blogs as well, leaving this for issues related to my professional task.

By now, enjoy reading our production and get involved in those areas of the web site that allow such interaction.

As Catalonia is a welcoming country, this blog is also a welcoming blackboard for opinions related to research. Welcome to your home.

“La ciencia que permitió descifrar el genoma” La Gaceta de Tucumán, 04/10/08

By Dani|2026-09-01T09:40:39+00:00November 4, 2008|CBBL News, Group, News|

En los institutos de la UNT comienza el interés por la bioinformática, una disciplina en expansión en Europa y en EEUU

En la voz de Jordi Villá, que acaba de protagonizar una de las tantas historias de reencuentros entre los españoles bajados de los barcos y los que se quedaron en el terruño, hay entusiasmo. “Cuando le dije a mi padre que venía a un curso en Tucumán, él no lo podía creer. Y yo tampoco: yo me había criado en mi pueblo, en Masnou, viendo el libro de Andrés Villá que vosotros tenéis allí en vuestro archivo”, contó Jordi.
Para los más jóvenes: Andrés Villá fue un artista catalán (dibujante y humorista) tucumano por adopción, que a lo largo de 33 años ininterrumpidos acompañó a los lectores de LA GACETA con su “Nota del día”, una viñeta de humor costumbrista.
Una vez en Tucumán, alguien, en el curso, le dijo a Jordi: “no sólo sabemos quién fue Andrés Villá; también podemos contarte que él tuvo dos hijas: una es María Isabel, que trabaja en LA GACETA; la otra se llamaba Nuria, y falleció hace poco tiempo”. De ahí al abrazo con la prima- y un largo café, para ponerse al día sobre la saga familiar – no hubo más que un trecho.
Doctor en Química y experto en bioinformática (dirige una maestría en esa disciplina en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra, de Barcelona), participó con otros colegas en Tucumán en un curso financiado por la Universidad de Andalucía que organizaron el Conicet y la UNT.

-¿Qué es la bioinformática?
– Es un campo de la ciencia en el cual confluyen varias disciplinas tales como: biología, computación, química e ingeniería. Sin ella no habría sido posible la secuenciación del genoma humano. Hay cinco grandes bloques: la bioinformática biomédica; la genómica computacional; la bioinformática estructural (trata de entender las estructuras de las proteínas, sus propiedades); el diseño de fármacos y la biología de sistemas, que es el uso de la informática para estudiar la biología: tomas una célula, y con el ordenador intentas hacer simulaciones, para ver cómo funciona esa célula. Aunque esto es todavía un poco ciencia- ficción.

– ¿Podemos decir que en la bioinformática el ordenador llega adonde no llega el ojo en el laboratorio?
– Podemos. El mundo de la bioinformática está en plena expansión. Hay quienes afirman que en 10 años la biología va a ser computación en un 50 %.

– ¿A qué atribuye que la bioinformática no se haya desarrollado todavía en la Argentina?
– Argentina es muy potente en ciencia; exporta muchos investigadores muy buenos. Es probable que lo que haya ocurrido aquí sea la organización de la Universidad, compartimentada. Quizás falte esa mirada sistémica, interdisciplinar, que exige la bioinformática.