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Scientific Director’s Presentation
Dear researchers,
First of all please allow me to start this letter for presenting the Annual Report 2015 by thanking you for the great effort and commitment that you have put into CIBERES yet another year. All the good results that will be set forth in the following pages are due to your excellent work.
2015 was a vital year for CIBERES: first of all because we were assessed by the Comisión Técnica de Evaluación de Redes y CIBER (CTER) of the ISCIII and got the third highest mark of all the CIBER thematic areas. This good mark is a obviously a cause for celebration, but more important still, it shows us that there is room for improvement. Secondly, because our research programmes were evaluated by the ANEP with good results in general.
As a result of both assessments we proceeded to comprehensively restructure our scientific and governing organisation. We have gone from hav- ing nine scientific programmes to having three with ten lines of research and we have renewed our Management Committee, our Teaching Com- mittee, our External Advisory Scientific Commit- tee, which is now presided by Dr. David Gozal, and most of our coordinators in the Research Line. Our distribution of economic resources and our human resources and teaching policies will also be structured, in 2016 and more markedly in the following years, on the basis of the results of the assessments.
2015 gave us the chance to include a new group in the CIBERES; the group led by Dr. Francisco García Río at the Instituto de Investigación San- itaria del Hospital Universitario La Paz (IdiPAZ). This group does research into the physiopatholo- gy of limitation of air flow, morbidity of cardiovas- cular sleep disorders, pathogenic mechanisms in asthma, tolerance of the innate immune system in respiratory diseases and characterisation of gene targets of the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) in intermittent and sustained hypoxia. We are sure that their joining us will allow new projects and intra, inter and extra-CIBER cooperation to be got under way, which will all result in the greater excellence of our scientific production.
Please let me finish with a very special remem- brance of Dr. Constancio González, PI of group 24, Universidad de Valladolid, who died last June 2015. He was a master of dozens of doctors and an excellent scientist who leaves us a major leg- acy of knowledge and an example of good per- sonal and professional practice. As a tribute to him, CIBERES has decided to grant a prize with his name to the best communication of a young researcher at the Annual Teaching Sessions.
Thank you once more for all your efforts and my best wishes for the coming year’s work.
Dr. Ferran Barbé.
Scientific Director of CIBERES.
CIBERES I Annual report 2015 I 3