Can Ruti Campus Open House returns for National Science Week
Today over 200 students from 7 centres in Badalona studying the technical or scientific baccalaureate, or vocational training course in healthcare visited the Can Ruti Campus. This year young researchers from 6 research institutions and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona gave talks, workshops and guided tours explaining their passion for biomedical research. The event is organized in conjunction with the organizing Committee of the Scientific Workshops for Schools in Badalona.
The visit started in the auditorium of the Germans Trias Hospital with a welcome from the director of the IGTP, Dr Manel Puig. Using practical examples and appealing directly to the more than 200 high school students, he explained the scientific method, all the resources needed to carry out research, the importance of teamwork and interdisciplinary collaborations and above all highlighting the vocational part of both medicine and research. Dr Antoni Bayés, Head of Cardiology and leader of the Cardiovascular Disease Research Group at the institute continued with a talk on some of the group's lines of research. Both speakers have stressed that not all cutting edge research takes place abroad, but that in fact it can be just a bus ride away.
After the talks, a wide range of activities were coordinated by the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) involving the Blood and Tissue Bank (BST), the Germans Trias University Hospital (HUGTP), the Guttmann Institute, the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC), the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute, the Centre for Epidemiological Studies on STI and HIV/AIDS of Catalonia (CEEISCAT) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
New activities this year included workshops on statistics in clinical trials and bioinformatics and the analysis of big data, some of the most sought after skills in modern research. At the IGTP one of these workshops took place and students have learned about the use of bioinformatics in current diagnostic techniques for hereditary cancer at the Germans Trias Hospital.
IrsiCaixa and CEEISCAT also held workshops to explain aspects of laboratory and fieldwork on HIV and other STIs, the ICO gave a workshop on clinical trials and opened their precision medicine laboratory to explain the development of diagnostics techniques. Small groups were able to visit biomedical research laboratories in the company of young scientists working on cardiology, leukemia, hepatic cancer and immunology, amongst other diseases, at the IGTP and the IJC. In the hospital, groups visited the emergency room and Pediatrics Department and also attended a workshop on how hand-washing will help you to avoid getting ill. A researcher from the Guttmann Institute explained the work of the institute and visitors saw some of the facilities used by patients. Finally, the group visiting the blood bank learned about the processes involved from blood donation to storage and use for patients. A total of 25 young researchers have taken part as guides to the research facilities in this year's event.
The task of our scientists to seek out funding was also touched on. In the presentations and visits over 20 research projects were discussed including RESTORE, HARMONY, ChiLTERN and ELBA funded by the European Commission and concerning immunotherapies, treatments for blood neoplasms, pediatric liver cancer and liquid biopsies for lung cancer respectively.