IMB-CNM researcher awarded with a BBVA Foundation Grant

Xavier Muñoz Berbel, post-doctoral “Ramón y Cajal” researcher at IMB-CNM, has been awarded one of the “BBVA Foundation Grants for Researchers and Cultural Creators 2015”.

The grants are given on a personal basis to researchers in an intermediate career stage, and allow a great flexibility for resource management. In this second annual call there have been more than 1900 applications, from which 63 grants have been awarded.

The objective of the awarded project (SOAR: Optomechanical Sensor for Resistance Arteries) is the development of an optomechanical tool for the in vivo measurement of small arteries without the need to eliminate the underlying tissue. It has been recently shown that functional changes in these arteries may play a role in diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases or depression, and currently there is no experimental technique able to measure them in vivo.