The Generalitat (Catalan Government) awards the researchers Jaume Bertranpetit, professor of Biology of Pompeu Fabra University, and Isabelle Vernos, researcher of the Centre of Genomic Regulation (CRG), with the Narcís Monturiol medal in recognition to their scientific careers.

The awards ceremony took place on 11 February at 18:30 h at the Palau de la Generalitat. The Minister for Business and Enterprise, Jordi Baiget, will chair the event with the assistance of Arcadi Navarro, the current Secretary of Universities and Research, and other authorities.

The Narcís Monturiol awards, constituted by the Government in 1982, want to honor individuals and organizations that have made an outstanding contribution to the development of science and technology in Catalonia. Jaume Bertranpetit, who leads the research group of Evolutionary Systems Biology of the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (IBE), joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and UPF, has been awarded for his contributions to human evolution based on genome information. He has focused on the study and comprehension of the human genome diversity, he has worked on worldwide populations and specially, he has worked for understanding how the natural selection modeled evolution basing on the genome prints. Isabelle Vernos, senior ICREA researcher and leader of the group on Microtubules Function and Cellular Division of the CRG, is also a member of the European Research Council (ERC), of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and of the Advisory Committee for Science, Technology and Innovation from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.