People: Mercedes Balcells-Camps

Bio

Dr. Balcells earned a Masters of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Institut Químic de Sarrià (1995) and in Chemistry from Ramon Llull University (1996), and a PhD in Macromolecular Chemistry from RWTH Aachen in 1999 as a fellow from La Caixa Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD). In June 1999 she joined the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center as a postdoctoral fellow carried out pioneer work in tissue engineering of vessel-like structures. In 2006 Dr. Balcells became a MIT research scientist and profesora titular in Bioengineering at her alma mater, Institut Químic de Sarria (Ramon Llull University). Through her dual appointment at MIT and Institut Químic de Sarrià, Dr. Balcells has promoted innovative, highly productive research and educative exchanges between both institutions and countries. As a direct consequence of her work in extending MIT’s international opportunities for students and faculty she created the MIT-Spain Program. Each year the program provides 50 MIT students across schools and departments with internship opportunities in Spanish companies, universities and research centers. The program also awards seed funds to promote collaborative new research projects between MIT and Spanish faculty. In 2011, Spain’s government bestowed Dr. Balcells with the Cross of the Order of the Civil Merit for her contribution to establish a fruitful channel between MIT and her home country, Spain. Dr. Balcells is a passionate basic scientist who embraces working with physicians and clinicians as well as industry partners to accelerate the path of new technologies and therapies from bench to bed-site. She is also a motivated mentor and the projects she leads become the ideal venue to educate the next generation of engineers, biologists, material scientists, physicians, computer scientists and chemists who learn to work collaborative as the only way to solve today’s greatest challenges in health. Dr. Balcells is an entrepreneur and co-founded the Spanish start-up Regenear that utilizes chondrocytes from a small biopsy to regenerate cartilage for facial tissue regeneration. She also chairs the new MIT IDEA² Global program, which provides mentoring and connections to biomedical innovators around the world to develop and realize their project ideas.

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Research Interests

Dr. Balcells’ research group in tissue engineering has shown how endothelial cell states are critical to tissue response to injury, vascular and neurological. The concepts she has elaborated have already helped understand why microvascular disease is such an important element and exacerbent of neurologically dementing diseases. Dr. Balcells’ research bridges the cardiovascular and neuroscientific domains – closing the gap between computational predictions and animal models, through functional and signaling studies on endothelial and neighboring cells performed in a highly multidisciplinary fashion.

Selected Awards/Societies

• Chair of the MIT IDEA² Global Program, 2016
• Reviewer for the Landsteiner Foundation for Blood Transfusion Research, 2015
• Accreditation as advanced researcher by Catalan quality of research agency (AQU), 2015
• Keynote speaker in award ceremony of La Caixa Fellowships, 2015
• Associate editor of Science Translational Medicine, 2013
• Member of the international advisory board, MIHealth Forum, 2012
• Official Cross of the Order of the Civil Merit by Spain´s Foreign Affair Minister for contributing to link research and education activities between MIT and Spain, 2011
• Spanish accreditation as researcher (2 research periods received the official accreditation, 1998-2003 and 2004- 2009), 2011
• Winner of the business plan competition organized by Caixa Manresa (Barcelona) for the project “Regenear – facial cartilage regeneration”, 2010
• Spain’s minister of economy and innovation (MINECO), grant reviewer, 2010
• Catalonia grant agency for university support (AGAUR), grant reviewer, 2009
• Member, American Physiological Society, 2002
• “Borchers-Plakette” to the best PhD in the field of study, RWTH Aachen, 1999
• Research fellow, La Caixa-DAAD (three years PhD scholarship), 1996