Quique Bassat Receives One of the Narcís Monturiol Awards for Scientific and Technological Merit

Quique Bassat, paediatrician and ICREA researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), has received one of the Narcís Monturiol Awards for scientific and technological merit. These awards are granted by the Government of Catalonia to distinguish individuals and organisations whose merits have made a significant contribution to the development of science and technology in Catalonia.

A career dedicated to infectious diseases

Throughout his professional career, Bassat has combined his clinical work as a paediatrician with research in infectious diseases that affect the most vulnerable people. His main area of interest has been the prevention and treatment of malaria in childhood, with a special focus on the clinical overlap between malaria and other common paediatric conditions.

Bassat has also conducted work on the epidemiology and causes of viral and bacterial respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases and neonatal infections in countries such as Mozambique, Morocco and Bhutan, as well as neglected diseases such as yaws. He is currently ICREA research professor and director of the Malaria Programme at ISGlobal.

During the 2022 awards ceremony, held on Wednesday 25 January at the Auditorium of the Palau de la Generalitat, the ISGlobal researcher spoke on behalf of the 11 awardees of this year's edition. "The award winners are characterised by their creativity, talent, dedication, effort, humanism, generosity and a job well done. Their example should continue to guide future generations of scientists", he said.

Bassat also underlined his firm belief in "the extraordinary potential of science as a catalyst for transforming human reality and, in particular, the reality of the most disadvantaged populations in our global society".

The Narcís Monturiol Awards

The Narcís Monturiol Awards have been awarded every two years by the Government of Catalonia since 1982 in the form of medals and plaques to individuals and legal entities, respectively. The people and institutions awarded cover all fields of knowledge, from the life sciences and health to the humanities and social sciences, architecture and engineering.

The Catalan Government awarded the Narcís Monturiol medals to nine other researchers in the Catalan research system: physicist and mathematician Àlex Arenas; geologist and climatologist Isabel Cacho; historian Rosa Congost; astrophysicist Roberto Emparan; engineer Xavier Oliver; historian Raquel Piqué; agricultural engineer Rosa M Poch; physicist Trinitat Pradell, and biochemist Salvador Ventura. The Narcís Monturiol plaque was awarded to the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute Fundation (VHIR).