On 15 ^th July, the General Council of the Xarxa Vives d'Universitats presented the 2010 Scientific Communication Prizes 2010, awarded by the Xarxa Vives and the the University of Valencia Chair for Dissemination of Science and the CAM.

The winning article in the Basic Sciences, Health Sciences, Engineerings and Architecture Category was " Genome and Recombination: tracing the evolutive history of humans", by Marta Melé Messeguer, from her Doctoral Thesis "Incorporating recombination into the Study of Recent human evolutionary history, which she defended at Pompeu Fabra University on 29 ^th March, which was directed by Jaume Bertranpetit and Francesc Calafell.

The 2010 Prize jury, coordinated by Martí Domínguez of the University of Valencia, consisted of Rosa Calafat, from the UNESCO chair in Languages and Education, Gustau Muñoz (UV) and Jordi Solé (University of Vic)

In the winning article, the author explains the research carried out during her doctoral thesis which consisted of using the imprint that recombination leaves in genomes in order to study evolutionary history in humans. According to Melé, "In specific terms, by observing the recombination patterns of today's human populations, we can discover know a lot about their past." "We focused on studying the migratory routes humans followed when they left Africa to colonize the other continents, 60,000 years ago," she added.

Marta Melé Messeguer obtained her bachelor's degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona (2005). She then obtained the Biomedical Research Master (2007), followed by a Phd at UPF (2011). She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Primate Genomics lab at the Evolutionary Biology Institute (UPF-CSIC), a research group led by Tomàs Marquès-Bonet. Within this knowledge area, Melé studies the differences between duplicated genes in certain groups of large primates in order to understand the role these species have played in evolutionary history.

The Xarxa Vives (Vives network), the University of Valencia Chair for Dissemination of Science and the CAM have awarded the "Joan Lluís Vives" Scientific Communication Prize annually since 1999, in order to promote communication skills among PhD Students. Those entering must be PhD Students with a registered but not publicly defended Doctoral Thesis. In order to participate, they must present an unpublished original journal article, written in Catalan which has not been entered for other contests.

The article must cover the same subject as the Doctoral Thesis and the Jury evaluates the impact and above all the scientific and social interest of the research. There are two categories: Social and Education Sciences and Humanities; and Basic Sciences, Health Sciences, engineering and architecture, which each have a prize of 1,500 euros and publication in the Journals Mètode and L'Espill, together with a journalistic review of the article in El Temps Magazine. The Jury was made up of teaching staff from the universities in the network and other professionals linked to the area of work of the prize.