Last year, during its Founding Conference, the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) announced the eight projects that would undergo the first phase of their Ignite Programme. Ignite was created to boost innovative research projects that promote collaborations between BIST centres. Now, BIST has awarded three outstanding multidisciplinary projects the opportunity to move on to the second phase of the programme. All of the projects that will enter said second phase of the first BIST Ignite Program contribute significantly to the scientific landscape.

The winners are:

• THEIA (“Towards the implementation of a multi-electrode array for retinal prosthesis”), led by Pablo Loza-Álvarez of ICFOand José Antonio Garrido of ICN2.
• GenStorm (“An integrated approach to visualize and model the spatial conformation of genes at the nanoscale level”), led by Marie Victoire Neguembor of CRG and Pablo Dans Puiggrós of IRB Barcelona.
• InWOC (“In-situ atomic resolution transmission electron microscopy of heterogeneous water oxidation catalysts”), led by José-Ramón Galán-Mascarós of ICIQ and Jordi Arbiol of ICN2.

These projects were chosen from the eight that were awarded a BIST Ignite grant during the first phase at the beginning of last year. All of them were developed over 2017 and presented their results, as well as their plans for further research, to a selection panel. Based on this, the top three projects were chosen and given another grant to continue their work. Due to the high quality of the results obtained by all eight teams however, the selection was not easy. In the words of the Panel members: ‘it was tough not recommending all the projects for funding.’

Reference: BIST awards three multidisciplinary projects for the Ignite Program’s second phase