In one week, on Tuesday 11 July, Dr. Borja Ibáñez Cabeza will receive the XII Banco Sabadell Foundation award for Biomedical Research for his innovative contribution to the fight against cardiovascular diseases through the diffusion of basic and technological knowledge for the prevention and treatment of this disease. You can watch it via streaming from 20:00 by clicking here.
Get to know more about Dr. Ibáñez better through these 11 questions…
1.- If you had not become a cardiologist, what would you have become instead? Until the very end of my degree I was still debating whether to become a neurologist or a cardiologist. If I had to start all over again, I would have the same doubts.
2.- What is the main characteristic that a cardiologist/scientific researcher should have? Resilience. It is important to be very resilient and to have a clear objective. There are many options whereby one can dedicate themselves exclusively to the clinic, and job offers are usually received before completing ones training as a cardiology specialist. A career as a research cardiologist is not easy, although the satisfaction of seeing your contribution towards progress, and the fact that the cardiology community can use your research to help patients all over the world is a feeling of utmost satisfaction.
3.- When you were little you dreamt of being …? The leader of a rock bank. But luckily I was never any good at music.
4.- And now you dream of being…? A good mentor to my children.
5.- Which quality do you most value in a person? Loyalty
6.- Which discovery would you most like to announce to the world in a few years? Reduced long term mortality and morbidity of patients who have suffered a myocardial infarction.
7.- What do you need in order to concentrate? I need the telephone not ring, not to receive any emails and for nobody to walk through the door. I mean, before 7am or after 8pm.
8.- Do you work whilst listening to music or in silence? With music, but if I know the songs I start to sing and then I have to change…
9.- Where do you like to go in order to disconnect? To the mountains, or the sea. I love to go to the mountains with my family (Noemí and our 3 children) to spend the day, or to go diving.
10.- Ebooks or paper books? I prefer paper books, but digital books are lot simpler to have close to hand… I have succumbed to the lure of this technology…
11.- Which headline would you like to read one of these days? There are a lot… I can pick two which are related to my field (there would be a lot more unrelated to my field): “Spain creates a Ministry for Science and Innovation” and “Spain invests 3% of GDP in R+D+I”.