Start-up of the 4DHeart Project

Last October 16th, the launch meeting of the project “4D Analysis of the development and regeneration of the heart through advanced optical microscopy' (4DHeart) was held. This is an Industrial Doctorate project (EID) funded by the European Commission, coordinated by Professor Miguel Torres from the CNIC, with the collaboration of Dr. Nadia Mercader of UBERN, Bern, Switzerland, which has a budget of 1.5 million euros and will last four years. The main objective of this project, contemplated within the framework of the Marie Curie Program of the H2020 of the European Union, is to promote collaboration between academic research and industry. "This is a training project that includes 12 European institutions for the training of young scientists," says Professor Torres. The CNIC has received the trust of the European Union in this "tremendously competitive" program to coordinate these 12 institutions and carry out this project that seeks to train "a new generation of scientists for the future," he adds.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the companies involved in this ambitious project. Jochen Gehring, from Ditabis, Pforzheim, Germany; Florian Fahrbach, Leica, Wetzlar, Germany; Julien Vermot, IGBMC, Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France; Willy Supatto, del CNRS, Paris, France; Javier Sánchez, Philips, Madrid, Spain; Peter Majer, de Bitplane, Zurich, Switzerland, and Michael Liebling, de IDIAP, Martigny, Switzerland.

In addition, four of the six students participating in this program attended the meeting: Eleonora Lupi, Tiago Fernando Ferreira da Silva, Laia Ortiz and Elena Remacha Motta.

From the 18^th to the 20^th, these four students also participated in the first of several training courses that will be offered within the program. They learned about animal models and databases in biomedical research, management of biomedical databases, intellectual property and communication techniques.