Joan Jofre, new president of RACAB, and Miquel Canals, entered academician in the historical institution
“Processos oceanogràfics a la mar catalanobalear i llurs conseqüències: lʼoceà dins de lʼAntropocè” is the title for the speech given by Professor Miquel Canals, head of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences (GRC), from the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona, during the ceremony of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB) in which he enters the academy as elected academician.
The ceremony, held this October, was the first official event of the new president of RACAB, Joan Jofre, emeritus professor from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics of the University of Barcelona. The event had the participation of Àlex Aguilar, vice-rector for Outreach and Internationalization of the UB and academician of RACAB, and Joan O. Grimalt, director of the Research and Development Center in CSIC (CID-CSIC).
“Processos oceanogràfics a la mar catalanobalear i llurs conseqüències: lʼoceà dins de lʼAntropocè” is the title for the speech given by Professor Miquel Canals, head of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences (GRC), from the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona, during the ceremony of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB) in which he enters the academy as elected academician.
The ceremony, held this October, was the first official event of the new president of RACAB, Joan Jofre, emeritus professor from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics of the University of Barcelona. The event had the participation of Àlex Aguilar, vice-rector for Outreach and Internationalization of the UB and academician of RACAB, and Joan O. Grimalt, director of the Research and Development Center in CSIC (CID-CSIC).
The Anthropocene: challenges and commitments in the field of science
During his speech, Miquel Canals commented on the spectacular progress of scientific knowledge on several high-energy oceanographic processes - dense water cascading, offshore convection and storms- in western Mediterranean and the global ocean. “The Catalan-Balearic Sea is a global-scope paradigm in this field, thanks to the efforts of the scientific community in Catalonia and other areas where they have studied these processes and their abiotic and biotic consequences, and they are still doing so” noted Canals.
The new elected academician commented on the big impacts caused by these processes on marine geology and ecology in the oceanic ecosystems (carbon sequestration, bioluminescence in marine seabeds, sediment transport to submarine canyons, etc.). Canals, the current director of the Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics of the UB, warned about the impact of human activity -such as trawling- on the submarine relief. Awarded Jaime I Prize in Protection of the Environment (2008), Canals called for the international community responsibility to “describe, interpret, communicate, predict and propose” regarding the worrying scene shaping the Anthropocene. The speech by Miquel Canals was answered by the academician Mariano Marzo, professor and expert on energy resources, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the UB.
Joan Jofre, new president of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona
Professor Joan Jofre, member of the Research Group Microbiologia dʼAigües Relacionada amb la Salut (Health-related Water Microbiology, MARS) of the UB, is the new president of RACAB, an institution with more than 250 years of history in the promotion of scientific and technological knowledge in the city.
Joan Jofre is an expert on the study of the presence and persistence of pathogenic microorganisms of faecal-oral route transmissions and their indicators in water, and is one of the promoters of Bluephage, a new spin-off by the University of Barcelona which aims to provide -with bacteriophages- with better tools for the analysis of the water microbiological quality. Author of more than two-hundred publications in high-impact scientific journals, he presided over the Group Microbiologia dʼAigües Relacionada amb la Salut (health-related water microbiology) -which belongs to the International Water Association (IWA)- and the Work Group of the International Organization for Standarization (ISO), working on the standardization of microbiological methods applied to water microbiological analysis. Member of the American Academy of Microbiology (United States), among other entities, he received the Narcis Monturiol Medal for scientific and technological merit by the Generalitat de Catalunya (1997).
In the academic field, the current president of RACAB has taught at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Complutense University of Madrid (1978-1979) and at the University of Balearic Islands (1979-1982). Since 1982, he has been professor of Microbiology of the current Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona. Also, Joan Jofre was the director of the former Department of Microbiologya, vice-dean of the Faculty of Biology and vice-rector for Research and Scientific Policy, apart from being member of the Scientific Policy Committee and the Academic Committee of the UB.