On 25 April, Emilio Lora-Tamayo, President of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and of the Fundación General CSIC (FGCSIC), and Jaime Lanaspa, Director of Fundación «la Caixa», presented the five research projects selected for funding under the Proyectos Cero call for proposals for projects on the topic of Ageing. The event took place during the 2nd FGCSIC Seminar on Ageing at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid.
The seminar was opened with a talk by the director of the Fundación General CSIC, Javier Rey, who gave a presentation of the activities the Foundation is running in relation to the topic of ageing, in particular the call for Proyectos Cero proposals, the FGCSIC report and survey on R&D on ageing, and the latest issue of the science communication journal Lychnos dedicated to the topic.
His presentation was followed by talks by Ana Martínez Gil, a research professor at the CSIC’s Institute of Medical Chemistry, on the CSIC and «the challenge of Alzheimer’s disease: tideglusib, a drug at advanced clinical development stage,» and María-Angeles Durán, a research professor at the CSIC’s Human and Social Sciences Centre, who described how we are likely to spend a larger share of our lives old than young.
The final part of the session was devoted to a presentation on each of the projects receiving funding, and the principal investigators of each project were given their official award documentation by Jaime Lanaspa and Emilio Lora-Tamayo.
The FGCSIC 2011 call for Proyectos Cero proposals on Ageing, supported by the CSIC and with funding of a million euros from Obra Social «la Caixa», initially received 47 applications, each of which brought together various research groups. Of these, 15 projects passed to the second phase of the evaluation process, and five were finally awarded funding: Two of these projects relate to studies on psychological and social topics and three will examine specific technologies in more detail.
The Fundación General CSIC has launched the Proyectos Cero programme to promote outstanding, unique, world-class research taking a trans-disciplinary perspective. It is through this type of initiative that the FGCSIC aims to achieve its mission as a foundation: promoting public-private partnerships in R&D.