The latest addition to WIT, Sergio Isola, has presented a poster with the first results of his PhD research at the 31st Annual Congress of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy that took place in Rome at the end of October, 2024.

Sergio is currently researching in gene editing strategy to develop a therapy for non-syndromic congenital hearing loss caused by the deficiency of a protein called Connexin 26, within the framework of the thesis work that is carrying out at the group of Gene Therapy for Rare Diseases at  CIMA-Unav.

The group was well represented at the congress, since Sergio was accompanied by other predoctoral students, as well as by his thesis supervisors, Gloria González-Aseguinolaza and Carmen Unzu. Sergio has participated in the category of Central nervous system and sensory diseases, with the poster titled 'AAV capsid discovery in the cochlea of non-human primates for precision gene medicine of congenital auditory indications'.

All of them have made interesting contributions to this annual event!!
Congratulations to all the team!!

The WIT fellows, together with some relatives and friends, has discovered the Baztan Valley, visiting Zugarramurdi and the famous cave of the witches, Amaiur, Elizondo or the botanical garden in Bertiz.

They went for a day trip on September 28, 2024. On a day partly sunny with little light rain, the group enjoyed the leisure time, visited picturesque villages of the valley, went through the green landscapes, tasted local gastronomy and refreshed their mind, sharing time with friends and doing activities outside of their daily work.

Along with the beginning of the academic year, a new course has been successfully completed to provide new skills to young researchers: 'New trends in Tech Transfer. From lab to society'. This time the training has been organized by the Knowledge & Tech Transfer Office of the University of Navarra within the framework of the WIT project.

The course, imparted by Miguel Estruch Soler, offered valuable insights into key aspects of tech transfer to doctoral students, equipping them with the knowledge and tools to transform their research into a positive impact for society, while teaching them how research outputs can be protected and commercialized, the step-by-step process from lab discoveries to market-ready innovations, or how to become entrepreneurs to bring their innovations to society.

In a nutshell, how to improve the valorization and transfer of the research outcomes, to innovate and create impact, throught the technology transfer and intellectual property protection.

There has been 3 online sessions and a hands-on workshop in which attendees worked in a business case, where participants applied what they learned to real-life scenarios, demonstrating their creativity and strategic thinking in addressing tech transfer challenges, to increase opportunities and entrepreneurship that may arise from research work in many fields.

Alisson García Herrera, a WIT PhD researcher at GILT Group-Institute of Smart Cities (Universidad Pública de Navarra), has presented the work 'Exploring Crowdshippers' Behavior and Preferences: Intertwining Urban Distribution and People Mobility' during the session of Sustainable Mobility and Urban Distribution in the 26th Conference of the Euro Working Group on Transportation (EWGT204). This encounter of experts was held in the historical Swedish city of Lund, from September 4-6, 2024.

The EWGT provides a forum where experts in the field of transportation, OR methods, mathematical models and computation algorithms share informations and experiences of their research, to solve problems in transport, traffic and logistic systems. Three days of high participation of experts in various thematic sessions focused on solving the problems that society, business and administration have to face in transportation and mobility, to move towards with innovative solutions. 

Valuable insights and research to the field of transportation of people and goods in a more sustainable and efficent way.

Ihtesham Khan, along with Dr. Iñigo Ederra, attended the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and ITNC-URSU Radio Science Meeting for the presentation of two accepted research papers. This year this important event was held in Italy, in the beautiful city of Florence, from 14 to 19 of July.

Ihtesham is a WIT young researchers who is doing the PhD in High-Gain Fabry Perot antennas for THz frequencies at the Antenna group of Upna, guided by the expertise of Dr. Iñigo Ederra.

This achievement of having two accepted papers on the IEEE AP-S/URSI 2024 reflects the satisfactory work done over this first year of Ihtesham's predoctoral WIT contract.

Let's know a bit more about the work presented in Florence:

• 'A Fabry-Perot Cavity Antenna with a SiGe on-chip Feeder for submm-wave Applications': The use of a Fabry-Perot cavity is proposed to enhance the radiation features of a 130nm BiCMOS SiGe onchip antenna and reach higher directivities. Antennas in this technology aim at providing the necessary means of radiation for the next-generation sub-mm-wave silicon front-end-on-a chip devices, which provide seamless integration with the digital chain and minimize additional losses existing in system in-package configurations. The introduction of a Fabry-Perot cavity can allow these antennas to increase their directivity while reducing the necessary complexity of the arrays, overcoming the limitations of the current technology.
   
• 'A Wide Beamwidth Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna for Wide Beam Scanning Antenna Arrays': A simple and cost-effective configuration to broaden the beamwidths of the patch antenna has been studied. The proposed antenna has been fabricated and tested, verifying that measurements shows good agreement with the simulations. The proposed antenna can find its application for the increasing the scanning coverage of the patch antenna arrays.

Valuable and applicable work, to continue making good progress in the research related with Ihtesham's PhD. Congratulations to Ihtesham, Iñigo and the Antenna group!

Alisson García Herrera has successfully completed a research stay at the Department of Applied Statistics and Operational Research (Universitat Politècnica de València-UPV, Alcoy Campus) to learn of advanced algorithms and transport optimization techniques. This knowledge and experience will be implemented in her research project, which is focused in solving transport optimization problems in the field of city logistics and smart mobility of goods and people that take place during urban last mile distribution. This engineer, specialized in transportation, is currently researching at UPNA’s DECYL group, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Javier Faulín.

During her stay in Alcoy, she has been guided by Prof. Dr. Ángel A. Juan, alongside other members of the group, whose researchs include applications of data analyticis, optimization for the industry, automatic learning and artificial intelligence fields, among others. Both groups from UPV and UPNA develop joint research within the context of the project 'Spanish Network in Transportation, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (TRA-AI Network)', funded by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RED2022-134703-T).

Moreover, at the begining of the stay she attended the International Summer Conference 2024 'Empowering Human Decision Making in a Robotics & Data-Driven World', together with her supervisor and other colleagues from Pamplona and Alcoy.

A really productive month for Alisson, who is doing good progress in her PhD project, to contribute to a more sustainable cities improving transportation and distribution agility.

Asheem Garwa joined INGEPER research group at Upna on August 2023, since he obtained one of the predoctoral positions awarded on the first call of WIT fellowships. Under the superivision of Dr. Julio Pascual and Dr. Luis Marroyo, Asheem is researching about how to optimize the integration of the renewables in the power grid.

In this framework, on 27th and 28th of June, Asheem attended the International Conference on Renewable Energies and Smart Technologies (IEEE REST-24) held in Kosovo, to presente the paper entitled 'Integration of Wind and PV Power in the Spanish Electric System Using Existing Hydroelectric Power'.

This paper analyses the potential reduction of electric energy generated with fossil fuels with 40 GW of PV power and 40 GW of wind power in the existing Spanish electric system and its integration by making use of existing hydroelectric power and reserves with different levels of flexibility. By considering different scenarios in relation to the flexibility in the use of hydroelectric power and time horizons, the researchers observed that notable gains in terms of fossil fuel reduction can be obtained when increasing flexibilit just slightly, showing how hydro power can integrate large amounts of variable renewable energy in Spain with only a small change in the reserves profile.

The course 'Doctoral GPS. Mentored path to success: Career guidance and development for Early-Stage Reseachers' has concluded after weeks of intense personal work of each participant under the supervision and guidance of Dr. Sara Manzano, founder of Mentes Innovadoras.

Through individualized tutoring, this course has worked on how to approach and face the challenges we find in our PhD journey. Learning more about ourselves to make better decisions, and having strategies that help us to live this stage easier, and to maximize the results of research and future opportunities. How to design the best career plan according to our interests, strengths, weakness..., how to build a network of contacts, how to prepare our public presentations, how to face the writing of the thesis and its defense, how to plan our future... are some of the critical moments that we live in this stage and are deependly analyzed in 'Doctoral GPS'. A very complete course, with a strategic planning and very useful tools to develop our career in a more successful way, both in the academic world and in the industry or R&D.

As a inspiring closure of the 1st edition of this course, Sara invited Dr. Fernando Mateos-González, biologist, expeditionary and science communicator, with a very interesting and complete career. With this background and the honesty of what he has lived, he shared with the attendants his life experience, both during his PhD and the following years in which he is engaged in several research projects and challenging activities. Really interesting experiencies, and a lot to learn from!!

Definitely, a highly recommended training for all those young researchers who are at this stage, to help them in the challenges of the present and focus them in a brighter future. The second edition will be  carried out in February 2025.

All the predoctoral researchers who obtained one of the 16 contracts from the calls of the WIT programme (cofunded by Horizon 2020-MSCA Actions) have finally arrived to the city and joined the respective research groups at the WIT hosting universities Upna and Unav.

Coming from different countries, diverse cultures and familiar situations, they all have a common nexus, a common goal: successfully face the challenges that this predoctoral stage entails, to build a better future.

If you want to know more about our WITs and what they are working on in their PhD projects, have a look at the PhD Students section.

Since this stage is not only hard work but also to make friends and to live new experiences, we wanted to get together so that those who have recently arrived could also meet the rest of their colleagues and part of the management team of WIT. It is nice to make friends to share and to feel accompanied in the PhD journey!

Joining the ambience that these days is spreading all over Pamplona, which is starting to get a bit crazy since the summer and the San Fermín festivities are just around the corner, we met for a walk in the Old Part of the city and have a drink and something to eat afterwards.

Thank you for your commitment and availability!! It was a great afternoon!!

With the publication of the Resolution 131E/2024 the last predoctoral contract of WIT has been awarded. This PhD position has been filled by Sergio Isola, Italian, who will carry out his thesis project in gene therapy within the supervision of Dr. Gloria González Aseguinolaza.

Therefore, WIT has completed the selection and incoming process of candidates for the 16 predoctoral contracts offered in the two performed calls (2022 and 2023). The 16 positions have been filled and all of the recruited researchers are already working in their projects, in the corresponding research groups of the WIT hosting universities: Public University of Navarra and University of Navarra.

You can get more details about the wit esr and their projects in the PhD Student section. As you can see, they have come from countries all around the world, as Ecuador, Brazil, Iran, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Italy, Colombia and Spain-Navarra. 5 of the ESRs are working in the area of Energy, 5 in the area of Health, 5 more in the area of Automotive, Mechatronic & Advanced Manufacture, and 1 ESR is in the area of Artificial Inteligence.

Sara Lorenzoni continues making progress in her PhD research and dissemination activities. She presented a poster entitled 'RGD Peptide nanoparticles as Targeting Agent for Neuroblastoma' at the Congressus Pharmaceuticus Hungaricus XVII and the Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS), which took place in Debrecen (Hungary) on 23-25 of May, 2024. This work is part of the research work of the thesis she is doing in the field of Nanomedicine under the supervision of Dr. María Blanco-Prieto (Faculty of Pharmacy and Nutrition of the University of Navarra).

Under the slogan of 'Tradition and Innovation in Pharmaceutical Sciences', this annual event brings a platform for pharmacists and researcher engaged in the pharamaceutical sciences worlwide for the discussion of significant issues in the research, development, regulation and therapeutic use of medicines.

Sara's thesis, through research and experimentation in the promising field of Nanomedicine, focuses on the development of alternative treatment pathways for neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer that affects the nervous system in infants. The aim of her thesis is to cure and reduce the long-term side effects due to other traditional treatments such as high-dose chemotherapy. Nanotechnology offers the potential for direct targeting of tumors and the tumor mircroenvironment, thus reducing side effects and providing treatments that not only cure but also improve the quality of life and the future of patients with these serious diseases.

Yesterday the last session of the Pint Of Science 2024 took place. Sara Lorenzoni, a WIT PhD fellow, talk about the interesting world of Nanoparticles in her talk entitled 'Nanomaterials: a revolution in Biomedicine'.

The Pint of Science festival is an international event that is held annually in hundreds of venues across the world, with the aim of getting people closer to the science. How? By bringing the science to the bars, so that the researchers can share their knowledge and achievements in different fields with the general public, using an understandable language and a friendly way.

Following the leitmotiv of the event, Sara made us go deeper into our imagination, and proposing curious similes, she made us realize how these extra tiny materials (1000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) and the research that is being done in different fields of application are shaking up the world of biomedicine.

Since therapies based on nanoparticles work as precise messengers or mini-taxis that transport drugs directly to the specific cells to be treated, exactly where they are needed, these treatments avoid attacking healthy cells and reduce serious side effects of conventional therapies such as chemotherapy.

Sara is a WIT Predoctoral researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Unav, under the guidance of Dr. María Blanco Prieto. Sara is developing her thesis on Targeted nanomedicines for the treatment of neuroblastoma, to 'cure better' this severe pediatric cancer, because children do not only need to survive but to grow up as healthy adults.

The benefits of these scientific advances for the society are unquestionable, and we look with hope to the future in relation to the target treatments of serious diseases and the application in tissue engineering, such as the recovery of neural or bone tissue.