From left to right: Mr Jordi Carbonell (FOT Secretary), Dr. Ceres Fernández (Emerging Researchers Grant), Dr. Joaquim Bellmunt (FOT President), Dr. Manel Esteller (Consolidated Researchers Grant) and Dr. Maite Solé (FOT Vice President).
September 23, 2022. The Royal Academy of Medicine of Barcelona hosted yesterday, September 22, the award ceremony for the FOT scholarships for the 2021/2022 call.
The award ceremony for the postdoctoral research grants on colon cancer of the Olga Torres Foundation(FOT) celebrated its sixteenth edition yesterday. The event is being resumed after the shutdown forced by the pandemic and is being held for the first time outside its home city, Sabadell, and with an audience from various business sectors.
In this edition, the event was chaired by Dr. Joaquim Bellmunt, appointed president of the Foundation last November, who heard the testimony of Josep Bombardó Navinés ( ), president and promoter of the Foundation for almost 20 years.
The event began with a guided tour of the facilities of the Royal Academy of Medicine, and then Dr. Eduard Batlle, researcher at the Institute for Biomedical Research of Barcelona, gave a talk on research in the oncological field, with special mention of research and advances in the specific field of colorectal cancer.
The grants, worth 60,000 each, were collected by Dr. Manel Esteller (from the Josep Carreras Institute) awarded in the category of Established Researchers with his project “Deciphering the epigenomic signature induced by the carcinogenic pks+E.coli and its role in colorectal tumorigenesis.” and Dr. Ceres Fernández (Galician Public Foundation of Xenological Medicine) awarded in the category of Emerging Researchers for her project “Omic-wide colorectal cancer risk deciphering the missing heritability-COALESCE”, who gave a brief presentation of their projects.
Dr. Bellmunt concluded the event by introducing himself and giving a brief summary of the history of the foundation for all those attendees who were participating for the first time, highlighting the importance of private initiatives in terms of resources allocated to research.
Since 2005, when the call for grants began, the volume of grants awarded has been 1.7 million euros. The funding for the grants comes from the management of the Foundation’s assets and donations from citizens.
At the end of the event, dinner was offered to all attendees.
September 23, 2022
