PRESS RELEASE
 

THE CRG STARTS THE SEARCH FOR ITS FUTURE DIRECTOR
 

After 10 years with Miguel Beato at the helm of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Centre is to initiate a selection process to find the ideal candidate to succeed the current Director. From the very beginning of the project Miguel Beato knew (like the majority of researchers at the CRG) that his post would be of limited duration.  This was one of the principal conditions that Dr. Beato agreed when he joined the Centre.  
The time has now come to prepare the way for the appointment of a new Director to continue to lead the CRG with the same success that Dr. Beato has enjoyed, and to make a fresh contribution to the running of the Centre. The process for the selection of a new director of the CRG has therefore been set in motion on an international footing, and will culminate in the appointment of the new director in 2011. The selection process will be international with adverts published in some of the most relevant scientific journals and the CRG website. The CRG Scientific Advisory Board will be in charge of the selection process and will send a short-list of candidates to the Board of Trustees of the centre.

An innovative model
Miguel Beato was one of the leading figures behind the creation of the CRG ten years ago. This ambitious project was to revolutionize the way science was organized and administered both in Catalonia and in the whole of Spain. From the very first Beato favoured the establishment of the Centre on a non-bureaucratic organizational model so as to encourage staff mobility and the international recruitment of researchers. The adoption by the CRG of this model, already in place at a European level, was one of the key factors which have enabled CRG to establish its position as one of the top international research centres.  “We took the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) as our reference model, and in some respects have improved on their example.  The fact that we have only been in existence for 10 years has given us greater flexibility when it came to adapting the model to the latest trends”, explains Miguel Beato. 
 
Epigenetics and proteomics
The CRG currently has 31 research groups distributed between 6 interrelated programmes: Gene Regulation, Genes and Disease, Differentiation and Cancer, Cell and Developmental Biology, Bioinformatics and Genomics, and Systems Biology, which includes the EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology. In collaboration with Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the CRG has also created an international PhD programme and 6 scientific and technical services, constituting the Advanced Light Microscopy, Genomics, Bioinformatics, High Throughput Screening, Flow Cytometry and Proteomics units.
 
Both the research groups and the scientific and technical teams have been formed and added progressively over time, and have earned the CRG its current status in the world of international biomedicine.  The quality of their scientific production and the large number of national and international projects that they have led are among the many successful achievements of CRG's scientists, as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of the hidden workings of the genome. “From the very first day our approach has always pointed us towards genomics, epigenomics and computational biology, and towards post-genomic biology. We believe that these fields will continue to be the main focus for the CRG's activities in coming years," states Dr. Beato.
 
10 years later
“There have been big changes in society, and especially in Catalan society, which have brought us a high level of support and backing,” says Beato, taking stock after ten years at the helm of the CRG. “The CRG has enjoyed constant support, which has enabled us to exceed our initial expectations. We have been able to attract top-level recruits both from Spain and from overseas, since we offer a highly competitive combination of facilities and professional environment. I can honestly say that my dreams have been not only fulfilled but surpassed.  Most important of all, what has happened at the CRG is not an isolated phenomenon. Other major centres have emerged in other fields”, Beato enthuses.

“We have achieved much more than I could ever have imagined when we first started out,” Dr. Beato admits. This is reflected by parameters such as the latest SCImago journal ranking of the production of scientific articles, in which the CRG is placed in international terms as the first centre in Spain, the sixth in Europe and the twentieth worldwide in citations in scientific publications and in the impact of its published material. 

In terms of funding, the Centre has 10 researchers financed by the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), 2 grants from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and 5 grants from the European Research Council (ERC), making it one of the Spanish research centres that receives most funding from the ERC in the field of life sciences.  We also act as coordinators for 4 CONSOLIDER Ingenio 2010 Spanish government programs and 3 European projects, in addition to participating as partners in 18 other European projects.  The CRG obtained an allocation of over 14 million Euros of funding provided by the European Union's 7th Framework Program. In terms of revenue received on the basis of competitive criteria, we were ranked in first place among the CERCA grouping of independent Catalan research centres, and fourth in the list of the top 20 Catalan grant-receiving entities (including all the major universities). Among the major European projects which have been assigned to the Centre, particularly noteworthy are INTERPOD (the International Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Programme) and the two coordinated projects SysteMTb (for research into tuberculosis) and Geuvadis (for standardization and the establishment of best practices in studies of genomic sequencing).  

For further information: Laia Cendrós,  Communications & Public Relations Dept., Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Dr. Aiguader, 88 – Edif. PRBB, 08003 Barcelona. Tel. +34 93 316 02 37.