IQTC Women: Carme Rovira
Carme Rovira obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry from the UB in 1995, in the group of Prof. J. J. Novoa. Part of her PhD research was carried out in the USA (NCSU and SIU) for one year, working with Profs. M.-H. Whangbo and S. Scheiner, respectively. Afterwards, she was Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute für Festkörperforschung (Stuttgart, Germany, 1996-1998), working with Prof. M. Parrinello, from Jan 1996 to Sept 1998. After another postdoc at UB (1999-2001), she obtained a Ramón y Cajal position (2002-2006) and moved to the Barcelona Science Park to start her research group. She was appointed ICREA Research Professor in 2007 and moved to the Department of Chemistry of the UB in 2012. She was visiting Professor at the University of York (UK) in 2019.
Carme has received research awards from the Catalan Government (Distinció de la Generalitat, 2003), the Barcelona City Council (Barcelona City Prize, 2016) and the European Carbohydrate Organisation (Emil Fischer Award, 2019). She recently received an ERC SyG grant (2020), together with colleagues G. J. Davies (York) and H. S. Overkleeft (Leiden). Carme is the author of about 170 publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as book chapters, mainly in the fields of theoretical chemical physics and computational biology.
The research at Carme’s lab is focused on the computer simulation of biological processes at atomic-electronic detail, i.e. using computers to understand how biomolecules work. She has trained a number of MSC and PhD students in this field. Her goal is to simulate the molecular mechanisms underlying ligand-protein interactions and enzymatic reactions, contributing to the design of more efficient enzymes and new drugs. In the last few years, her research has focused on elucidating catalytic mechanisms in glycoprocessing enzymes (glycosidases, glycosyltransferases and lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases) for biomedical and biotechnological applications.
In her spare time, Carme likes walking in the city, cooking and meeting friends.