Geneticists David Bueno and Gemma Marfany, awarded for their dissemination

David Bueno.
David Bueno.
Institutional
(07/03/2019)

Geneticists David Bueno and Gemma Marfany are the ex aequo awardees of the 6th Award of the Doctorsʼ Senate and the Board of Trustees to the best scientific and human sciences dissemination activities. This award promotes the dissemination of scientific activity and knowledge among society.

David Bueno.
David Bueno.
Institutional
07/03/2019

Geneticists David Bueno and Gemma Marfany are the ex aequo awardees of the 6th Award of the Doctorsʼ Senate and the Board of Trustees to the best scientific and human sciences dissemination activities. This award promotes the dissemination of scientific activity and knowledge among society.

David Bueno is a lecturer from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics of the UB. His career has been developed mainly in Barcelona and Oxford. He carries out an important dissemination task on science through articles, books and in the media. For instance, he contributes to the newspapers Ara and El Punt Avui, as well as Ràdio 4 and TV3. He has published seventeen dissemination books, a novel to bring biology closer to the young ones and about 500 journalistic articles. He has collaborated in several encyclopaedic works such as Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana and Història Natural dels Països Catalans, and has been the scientific director of Atles dels Ecosistemes dels Països Catalans, from Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana. He is the director end editor of Editions and Publications of the University of Barcelonaʼs book collection Catàlisi, an initiative to show in a communicative and rigorous manner, a wide range of topics on current science. So far, the collection Catàlisi has published a total of thirty-seven works, willing to treat current themes that create debate in the scientific community and public opinion.

David Bueno is the co-author of sixty scientific articles and takes part in more than fifteen research projects. His main research lines are composition, function and homeostatic control of the embryonic cerebrospinal fluid in the development of the central nervous system (CNS) in vertebrates, and the application of neuroscience in the improvement of educational systems (neuroeducation).

Gemma Marfany is a lecturer from the Department of Genetcis, Microbiology and Statistics of the UB. She published several scientific dissemination books on forensic DNA and ageing genetics, and has taken part in TV and radio programmes and many interviews for newspapers. She has a weekly section in El Nacional, where she publishes dissemination articles on scientific advances with a great media impact. She has contributed to the journal Mètode and gives dissemination lectures in high schools on research topics, she takes part in cineforums and promotes dissemination activities.

Marfanyʼs scientific and academic career has been developed in Barcelona, Edinburgh and Oxford. She is now leading a UB research group on human molecular genetics, to study genes that cause hereditary blindness, and is also the head of the U718 Unit in the Rare Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERER). She is also member of the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB), the Observatory on Bioethics and Law of the UB and the Bioethics Commission of the UB. She has more than 85 publications and has supervised eleven doctoral theses and many masterʼs and bachelorsʼ degree final projects. In 2018, she co-founded a spin-off on the genetic diagnosis of eye genetic diseases, DBGen.

The awards will be given in a public event on April 2, in the Aula Magna of the Historical Building.