About Carme 

Carme Rovira is ICREA Research Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Barcelona (UB). She  obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry from the UB in 1995 (with honors and UB award), in the group of Prof. J. J. Novoa. Part of her PhD research was carried out in USA (NCSU and SIU), working with Profs. M.-H. Whangbo and S. Scheiner, respectively, for one year. She was postdoc at the Max-Planck-Institute für Festkörperforschung (Stuttgart, Germany, 1996-1998; funded by EU-Marie-Curie), working with Prof. Michele Parrinello. She returned to the UB at the end of 1998 as senior postdoc ("Contrato de Incorporación de Doctores y Tecnólogos"; 1999-2001) and later moved to the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) as a Ramón y Cajal fellow (2002-2006) to start her independent research group. She was appointed ICREA Research Professor in 2007 (first at PCB, moving to UB in 2012). She was visiting Professor at the University of York (UK) in 2019.

Prof. Rovira 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 received an ERC SyG grant in 2020, together with colleagues Prof. G. J. Davies (U. York) and Prof. H. S. Overkleeft (U. Leiden). Rovira is the author of about 190 publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as book chapters, mainly in the fields of theoretical chemical physics and computational biology.

The research at Rovira's lab is focused on the modeling of biological processes at atomic-electronic detail by computer simulation, addressing fundamental questions on the function of proteins and enzymes. This knowledge can contribute to the design of novel proteins that are able to work under different conditions, as well as new inhibitors for enzymes involved in disease. In the last few years, her research  has focused on elucidating catalytic mechanisms in glycoprocessing enzymes (glycosidases, glycosyltransferases and lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases).

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