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Remembering Prof. Joan J. Guinovart

By January 14, 2025BIST Community

The BIST community remembers Prof. Joan J. Guinovart, founder and first director of IRB Barcelona. Prof. Guinovart was a founding member of the BIST and later the BIST Academic Director. His vision and unwavering dedication contributed to raising research excellence in Catalonia and building the BIST scientific community.

As a founding member of the BIST, in his capacity as director of the IRB Barcelona, Prof. Guinovart played a pivotal role in establishing the BIST mission and vision. His commitment to collaborative research and scientific excellence helped build a competitive ecosystem of research excellence in Catalonia. As BIST Academic Director, starting in 2019, Prof. Guinovart led the development of the Master of Multidisciplinary Research and Experimental Sciences (MMRES), inspiring students, coordinators, and faculty with his mentorship and comittment to world-class education. His passion for the dissemination of science also bore many fruits: he was the driving force behind the Bojos per la Ciència (Mad for Science) programme of the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, and actively contributed to the BIST Outreach Commission, working closely with the outreach officers of the centers that integrate BIST to promote scientific culture and modernize science education.

 

Born in Tarragona in 1947, Dr. Guinovart earned his degree in Pharmacy and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Barcelona, of which he became Professor and maintained close ties throughout his career. In 2005, he founded IRB Barcelona, which today is a BIST Community centre. He also served as President of the Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM), the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies (COSCE), and the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). Through these roles, he championed numerous initiatives to strengthen research systems locally, nationally, and internationally.

In his own research, Prof. Guinovart led the Metabolic Engineering Laboratory at IRB Barcelona, where he made pioneering contributions to the study of carbohydrate metabolism, diabetes, and Lafora disease—research areas that will continue to make a difference in the field of biomedicine. He was a mentor to many generations of scientists, including Prof. Joan Massagué, now Director of the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York, Chair of the External Advisory Board of the IRB Barcelona and member of the BIST Board.

 

The entire BIST Community joins the family and friends of Joan Guinovart and all who worked alongside him in sorrow at this enormous loss. We will greatly miss his brilliance, his sensitivity, his sense of humor and his personal approach to everyone.