Vocational training students from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, learn about the PHOTOTHERAPORT project during an Open Day visit at IIBB.
On 29 April 2026, the PHOTOTHERAPORT partner Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques de Barcelona (IIBB-CSIC) held an Open Day to bring its research closer to society, welcoming 25 students aged 18 to 25 and two teachers from the Centre Integrat de Formació Professional (CIFP) Francesc de Borja Moll, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. These students are currently enrolled in the Higher Vocational Training courses (Grau Superior) in Clinical and Biomedical Laboratory and in Pathological Anatomy and Cytodiagnosis.
The visit was jointly organised by teachers from CIFP Francesc de Borja Moll, the IIBB Direction and the IIBB Proteomics Service. The programme combined a short presentation of the institute at its headquarters on Carrer Rosselló, an outreach talk on proteomics applied to wastewater analysis, and a visit to the IIBB Proteomics Service facilities at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
As part of the visit, IIBB researchers presented posters explaining the work carried out by their groups. Among them, the PHOTOTHERAPORT project was introduced to the students at a conceptual level, in a poster prepared by Cristina López, a project PhD student from Victoria Puig’s group at IIBB. It focused on photopharmacology and its application to epilepsy. It also included images illustrating the activation of the photo-responsive PhotoTheraPort device.
Additionally, the students had the opportunity to visit some laboratories and facilities of the centre and to talk with the institute’s staff — mostly PhD students and technicians — about their day-to-day scientific work, helping them to better understand and construct their professional path.
Initiatives like this Open Day help PHOTOTHERAPORT researchers bring their work closer to the next generation of laboratory and biomedical professionals, encouraging early interest in scientific careers.
