This week, the BIST community celebrated the graduation of the 2023-2024 class of the BIST Master’s programme and welcomed the eighth cohort, the largest since its inception.
MMRES 2023-2024 students
September 10th, 2024, will be a date to remember for some of the youngest members of the BIST community: for some, it marked their first day as Master’s students in Barcelona; for others, it was the day they celebrated their graduation.
The 2024-2025 class of the Master of Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences (MMRES) met for the first time in the morning at the Recinte de la Maternitat, where they were welcomed by the programme’s co-director, Dr. Robert Sewell, and coordinator, Dr. Míriam Navarro. With 29 students from 13 different nationalities, this is the largest class since the programme began in 2017.
In the afternoon, the Graduation Ceremony for the 2023-2024 class took place at the iconic La Pedrera auditorium. Among the speakers, Dr. Míriam Navarro, Education Programme Manager at BIST and MMRES coordinator, took the stage to review the highlights of the graduating class. She congratulated the students not only for the high quality of their multidisciplinary research projects but also for the additional skills they acquired through the programme, such as communication, public engagement, and collaboration. “Excellent science requires more than knowledge and technical skills,” Dr. Navarro reminded the students.
Dr. Robert Sewell (left) and Dr. Míriam Navarro (right) speaking at the MMRES graduation ceremony
The keynote speech was delivered by Dr. Marion Salzer, a BIST-FBA postdoctoral fellow at the BIST Community Centre CRG, who presented her current research on primordial oocytes and aging. Sharing her own journey as an example —her first scientific paper, published in Nature in 2012, was on magnetoreception in pigeons— Dr. Salzer advised the students: “Join labs early and figure out what you like,” encouraging them not to fear changing research topics. Dr. Salzer’s accomplishments and determination to attain a leadership position led to her being awarded a 2024 “To the Mothers of Science” grant, a programme supported by the Barcelona City Council that assists women scientists who are also mothers.
Dr. Marion Salzer (CRG) was the keynote speaker.
The ceremony also featured active participation from the students. Two representatives of the graduating class, Dunja Arsenijević and Miguel Fernández, took the stage to reflect on their journey, from their first meeting in September 2023 to the present day. “We learned a lot from each other, worked hard, but also had fun. From classmates, we became friends,” they shared.
The evening concluded with a cocktail reception, where the incoming students and the graduating class exchanged experiences and discussed their expectations for the future.
