Director's message

Since its organisation in 2015, the Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD) has actively carried on biomedical research in the fields of paediatrics and mental health, always with its focus on patients and their families. Our early years were marked by the generation of knowledge, the improvement of clinical practice and the development of new diagnostic tools and treatments, and our incorporation into the CERCA system (Research Centres of Catalonia) was an important milestone in our progress.

IRSJD represents a joint endeavour of scientific research groups of excellence belonging to the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, the Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). These research groups are managed under the institutional umbrella of the Fundació de Recerca de Sant Joan de Déu.

Last February I took up my duties as the new director of IRSJD and I am very happy to form part of this outstanding medical, academic and university centre. I now face the challenge of continuing to promote innovation and research of international excellence with the aim of exerting a real positive impact on people's health. Through our biomedical research projects, we seek to understand the mechanisms behind health disorders in the paediatric period and in adulthood, including those affecting mental health. Our ultimate goal is to help to find new solutions to unresolved health needs.

The human team forming IRSJD, comprising everyone from researchers to technical experts and support staff, works as a unit to carry out research and innovation of the highest quality centred on people. Indeed, our research institute is a highly appropriate place for promoting the translation of knowledge from the laboratory to clinical practice since basic and clinical researchers here form teams which cooperate to foster the natural integration of research into our hospital's clinical practice.

As the director of IRSJD, one of my objectives is to provide our research groups with access to suitable infrastructures and to ensure the required human and material support, allowing these groups to deploy their full scientific potential and to carry out research on the same high level as the foremost international research centres. IRSJD must prove itself to be capable of offering an outstanding framework and environment that will not only permit us to attract talent but also to generate and retain it.

Dr. Joan Comella Carnicé
Director Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu