Back Investiture ceremony of Professor Sydney Brenner as doctor honoris causa by UPF

Investiture ceremony of Professor Sydney Brenner as doctor honoris causa by UPF

The 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate and one of the architects of modern biology. The ceremony will take place at 12:30 am on Thursday 3 April, in the auditorium of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park.
31.03.2014

 

brenner-1culturacientíficaAt its meeting on 19 June 2013, the Board of Governors, at the request of the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS) and the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, decided to invest the biologist Sydney Brenner as a doctor honoris causa of the Pompeu Fabra University.

This is the first time that the university has awarded this type of doctorate to a scientist, and is in recognition of his long and brilliant career in teaching and research in the field of molecular biology, which has made him one of the leading figures worldwide in that field of knowledge, and his standing as a historical figure who has been crucial in biomedical and genetics since the second half of the twentieth century.

At 12:30 pm on Thursday 3 April, the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate Sydney Brenner will be made a doctor honoris causa by UPF in a ceremony that will take place in the auditorium of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, on the UPF Mar Campus (Dr. Aiguader, 88. Barcelona).

Mireia Trenchs will open the ceremony as the acting rector of Pompeu Fabra University. Arcadi Navarro, professor of the CEXS, will be the master of the ceremony, and the encomia will be given by Miguel Beato, a researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, and Jaume Bertranpetit and Fernando Giráldez, professors at the CEXS. The three encomia will discuss Brenner's main contributions to various fields of biology: genetics, evolutionary biology and developmental biology.

One of the architects of the golden age of modern biology

Sydney Brenner, a molecular biologist who worked with Jim Watson and Francis Crick in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, became interested in the development of cells in 1986. Thanks to his pioneering work with the worm Caenorhabditis elegans , he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002, which he shared with H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston, "for their discoveries concerning 'genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death." Professor Brenner is therefore one of the architects of the golden age of modern biology of the second half of the twentieth century, and his contributions to knowledge have revealed some of the essential foundations of life.

celegansCombines musical creation with one of the most important scientific developments

The ceremony will include a performance of VERBUM (Genome in music), a musical piece inspired by the human genome by the composer Joan Guinjoan.

The piece, which was a commissioned by the CSIC-Government of Catalonia Residence for Researchers, was performed for the first time in 2003, and reflects the poetical and musical transcription of the gene sequence associated with speech, FOXP2, which is located on chromosome 7.

With the composition of this piece for piano, the composer takes a step towards intertwining the world of science and the world of culture, and combines musical creation with one of the most important scientific developments of our time - the deciphering of the human genome.

The ceremony is open to the entire university community and will be broadcast live on the University's website www.upf.edu. It can also be followed on Twitter with the hashtag #brennerhonorisupf .

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