Eight doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from Pompeu Fabra University were recently granted fellowships from “la Caixa” Foundation to pursue their research at UPF. These fellowships were awarded through two programmes: INPhINIT, for PhD candidates, and Junior Leader, for postdoctoral researchers.

Recipients from UPF include David Aquilué Llorens, from the Department of Engineering; Santiago Gamba Santamaria and Federico Mattei, from Economics; and Sandra Geladó Muñoz, from Translation and Language Sciences. All four were awarded an INPhINIT fellowship to pursue their doctoral studies. With regards to fellowships from the Junior Leader programme for postdoctoral researchers, the recipients were Pablo Moreno Muñoz, from Engineering; Eduard Ocaña-Pallarès and Mireia Vallès-Colomer, from the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS); and Lorijn Zaadnoordijk, from Engineering.

This year, “la Caixa” Foundation granted 100 fellowships to researchers looking to develop projects at universities and research centres in Spain and Portugal. 60 fellowships were awarded under the doctoral INPhINIT programme and 40 as part of the postdoctoral Junior Leader programme. The aim is to retain and attract talent and promote research excellence. Both help offer competitive salaries and cross-cutting training. Altogether, the organisation will allocate more than €21 million to this group of fellows.

Understanding the mechanisms of Alzheimer's Disease

David Aquilué Llorens (Forallac, 1999) is a PhD student at UPF’s Center for Brain and Cognition under the guidance of Prof. Gustavo Deco. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which misfolded proteins, key hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease, spread throughout the brain, contribute to neurodegeneration and disrupt neural functioning, ultimately leading to cognitive decline. The main aim is to use computational neuroscience to improve the early diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Studying the relationship between income inequality and structural transformation

Santiago Gamba Santamaría is a PhD candidate in Economics at Pompeu Fabra University. His research focuses on development from a macroeconomic perspective. More specifically, he studies the relationship between income inequality and structural transformation, i.e. the process that economies go through when shifting from agricultural societies to industrialised economies.

Multimodal communication across the human lifespan

Sandra Geladó Muñoz (Cornellà del Terri, 1995) is a PhD student in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at UPF and a research member of the Prosodic and Gestural Studies Group (GrEPG), where she explores the development and deterioration of multimodal communication across the human lifespan. She holds an undergraduate degree in Linguistics from UB, where she graduated with honours, and has contributed to multiple projects in the fields of linguistics, multimodal communication, neuropsychology and health promotion.

Labour market and inequalities

Federico Mattei (Melzo, Italy, 1996) is a PhD candidate in Economics at UPF. His research focuses on labour markets and inequalities. A graduate of Bocconi University in Milan, he holds a Master of Research from Pompeu Fabra University and has worked as a research assistant at Harvard Business School and UCLA Anderson on various projects related to immigration and beliefs.

IA: Modern machine learning algorithms

Pablo Moreno Muñoz is a member of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Research Group in the Department of Engineering at UPF. His research focuses on the connections between modern machine learning algorithms, architectures (e.g. transformers) and known frameworks of reference such as Bayesian modelling, information theory and the rigorous principles of generalisation. He is also often involved in continual learning and model merging. Prior to this, he performed research on Gaussian processes and probabilistic AI/ML methods.

The evolution of genomes

Eduard Ocaña Pallarès is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) at UPF. He admits to having a strong curiosity towards the genomic divergence process that culminated in extant biodiversity. His research involves reconstructing the evolutionary process by exploring the phylogenetic signal contained in the genomes of extant organisms.

The role of the human microbiome in mental health

Mireia Vallès Colomer (Folgueroles 1990) is a principal investigator in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) at UPF, where she leads the Microbiome Research Group. Her research focuses on the role of the human microbiome in mental health and its transmission among individuals. Her first contributions to the study of the microbiome occurred during her PhD at VIB-KU Leuven, in Belgium, where, while working in the Jeroen Raes Laboratory, she explored the relationship between the microbiome and mental health. It was there that she discovered the importance that this microscopic universe can have for human health.

Early predictors of impaired cognition in preterm infants

Lorijn Zaadnoordijk (Driebergen-Rijsenburg, Netherlands, 1987) will pursue her postdoctoral research in the Department of Engineering at UPF, through which she will endeavour to identify infants who may struggle with cognitive challenges. To do so, Lorijn Zaadnoordijk will use brain data acquired during her postdoctoral projects as a starting point for pinpointing potential behavioural markers for developmental problems. The aim is to find early predictors that allow paediatricians to identify those infants who need additional attention and help them throughout the lifespan.