Three high-achieving students from the first year of high school: Laura Valenciano López from IES Comarcal, Ana Gutierrez Benajas from IES Patraix - Vicenta Ferrer Escrivà, and Carmen Haukes San Lázaro from CP San Juan Bosco, visited on Tuesday, May 22 and Wednesday, May 23, the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), a joint UV-CSIC center. ARA Science is a program of scientific activities offered by the Delegation for Incorporation at the University of Valencia that aims to respond to the demand of secondary schools that raise the need to serve students with high abilities and/or high performance through activities that favor their curricular enrichment and the development of their abilities.

The visit began on Tuesday, May 22 at 9 in the morning at the institute's headquarters in the Science Park where the three students were received by the person responsible for the activity, Professor Emilia Matallana, who explained the functioning and scientific objectives of the Institute, and introduced basic concepts of Systems Biology. Next, the students visited some of the center's special facilities, accompanied by the person in charge of technical services Consuelo Escrivà, and also the collaborating biotechnology company Biopolis, where its technical development manager, Carles Palanca, explained some of its services and products, achieved thanks to the perfect science-business connection. The first day of the visit concluded with a visit to the I2SysBio data processing and storage center where Professor Wladimiro Díaz was in charge of bringing them closer to bioinformatics tools, fundamental in Systems Biology.

On the second day, also from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Laura, Ana and Carmen had the opportunity to learn first-hand about the lines of research of three of our scientists: Evolutionary Biology from the hand of Rosario Gil, Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology by Manel Porcar, and Virology, Evolution and Health by Rafael Sanjuán.