Call for proposals for B·Debate 2015 program of scientific debates now open

As of today, the call for scientists and experts from Catalan research centers to submit proposals for scientific debates is now open. The final 2015 program of the B·Debate - International Center for Scientific Debate Barcelona will be selected from among these proposals.

As established in the call rules, proposals will be accepted from today, 17 March, through 15 June. Once the debate proposals have been reviewed to ensure they meet the criteria of the call, the B·Debate Scientific Advisory Board will assess their scientific excellence. The final selection (between 8 and 10 debates, depending on budgetary considerations) will take into account both the potential scientific impact and social interest of the debates.

The activities that make up the yearly B·Debate program of activities must be aligned with the center’s mission, vision and values. Thus, the selection process emphasizes the debate’s potential to generate new knowledge at the cutting edge of the life sciences and related disciplines; to identify strategic challenges and new areas of study and research; to impact society, contributing solutions and innovation that improve the people’s conditions or quality of life; their international dimension, with a large number of speakers and organizations from outside Catalonia; their multidisciplinarity; and their ability to project Barcelona and Catalonia as hubs of scientific knowledge and excellence.

2014 Program

Additionally, the 2014 B·Debate program of activities will kick off on 14 May with a series of conferences on the key role algorithms play in developing our knowledge-based economic model. This is a series open to the general public, which the B·Debate program combines with restricted-access scientific debates. A second open series devoted to bioethics is also expected for 2014.  

Regarding the scientific debates, the topics B·Debate will cover in 2014 include different areas of biomedical research, like epigenetics and cancer (October) to generate new predictive, diagnostic and personalized-therapy tools to treat different types of cancer. The debates will also explore the horizons opened up through personalized respiratory medicine (June), focusing on the individual respiratory pathologies of each patient and adapting treatment to the specific biological characteristics of each person. They will discuss the challenges and opportunities being generated through biomedical big data (November) to improve knowledge on the cycle of diseases and to improve transfer to clinical applications. In epidemiology and the environment, sessions will analyze the impact the environment during childhood on the neurodevelopment of the brain (October), and the influence of climate on the development of various city models and the effects on the population’s health. The most cutting-edge 3D "bioprinting" technology will also be analyzed, in order to open up new lines of research into the regeneration of cardiac tissue.