Our team & collaborators

Malte Beringer, PhD

Malte is a grant advisor, scientific editor and trainer, providing tailored grant preparation services, primarily within the field of life sciences. In the community, he is also known as the “ERC whisperer”, for his ability to help candidates develop successful ERC applications.

Malte holds a PhD in Biochemistry. During his career as a researcher in top-class laboratories at the University of Witten/Herdecke (Germany), The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia (USA) and at the Centre of Genomic Regulation, Barcelona (Spain), he gained extensive hands-on experience in scientific writing and grant writing. As a grant consultant, he applies this expertise to support individual scientists and institutions preparing competitive grant proposals. Since 2018, he has been focusing on the most prestigious of all European funding schemes, the European Research Council (ERC), while also supporting collaborative proposals within the H2020/HEurope and applications to national funding programmes. Overall, he has helped scientists win grants totalling more than 35 M €. Among his clients are world renowned scientists working at CNIO (Spain), HiTS (Germany), IMDEA Nanociencia (Spain), IRB Barcelona (Spain), Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (Germany), and he has consulted clients working in Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, UK and the US.

Federico González Grassi, PhD

Federico holds a PhD in Biology. He brings a wealth of expertise in developmental genetics, pluripotent stem cells, genome engineering and disease modelling, which he consolidated during postdoctoral trainings (2007-2014) at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, USA), the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB) (Barcelona, Spain), the Sloan Kettering Institute (New York, USA), and then as a senior researcher (2015-present) at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) (Barcelona, Spain) and the Health Research Institute of the Balearic Islands (IdISBa) (Palma de Mallorca, Spain). He has authored more than 30 research and review articles and has received numerous competitive grants and fellowships.

Since 2017, alongside his research activity, Federico has been working as a scientific consultant for industry and academia, applying his expertise in genome engineering and induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Federico has worked with sciencepoint since 2022. He brings a unique capacity to analyze scientific proposals in great scientific and technological depth. His primary focus will be working with scientists in the molecular life sciences, leveraging his expertise in developmental genetics, pluripotent stem cells, genome engineering, and disease modeling. He enhances our unique ability to provide grant consultancy services tailored specifically for scientists, by scientists. His primary focus within this role is on ERC grant applications.

Iris Joval

Iris is a collaborating artist with sciencepoint. She studied Biology and worked in research labs at Cornell University (New York, USA) and at the CRG (Barcelona, Spain). Her enthusiasm for illustrative arts and graphical work led her to start a parallel career as a Scientific Illustrator, and she graduated from the Massana School of Art and Design (Barcelona).

For more than ten years, Iris has been designing high-quality figures for scientific documents of any kind, graphical abstracts or presentations. Her illustrations made it to the cover page of Cell, Nature, Cell Stem Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature Cell Biology and many other prestigious journals. Combining proper representation of biological concepts and attention to detail, her works will help you transmit important information in an efficient and aesthetic way. You can see examples of Iris’ illustrations at her personal webpage irisjoval.com.

Sara Ojanguren

Sara adds formation in design and experience in project management to our team. An architect by education (Polytechnical University Madrid, 2006), she has worked in such diverse fields as graphic design, 3D engineering, retail, interior design, and construction. She has a profound theoretical and practical knowledge on human perception, and masters the technical means how to truthfully transmit information and catch attention in visual graphics.

Always working closely with the client, she generates visually appealing yet simple graphics for scientific publications, presentations and web pages. At sciencepoint.eu, she also develops strategies and material to convey complex scientific information for educational or dissemination purposes. Furthermore, she provides consultancy on generating a consistent and attractive image for your project, your lab or your institution.

Prof Hans-Joachim Lipps, PhD

In memoriam: Hans-Joachim Lipps, 1945- 2023

Hans-Joachim Lipps was foremost a brilliant scientist who devoted large parts of his professional life to two things: doing research and mentoring younger scientists. He was Professor emeritus of Cell Biology at University of Witten/Herdecke (Germany), with previous positions in Tübingen (Germany), Edinburgh (UK), Cambridge (UK), Rome (Italy) and Boulder (CO, USA. Together with his group and collaborators, he made seminal contributions on the question of genome organization at a time when this field was not yet on everyone’s mind. Moreover, many of his PhD students and postdocs have established their own independent research groups.

Although I never worked in his laboratory, as a student I often sneaked into his office – where he was usually accompanied by his dog – particularly at times of doubts and questions for me. He always had an open ear. He provided, in his sometimes slightly acerbic way, useful advice, and often we ended up talking about music and opera.
Following his retirement, supporting and mentoring younger scientists kept being one of his main motivations. In this role, he was critical when I asked him to collaborate with me in the new scientific endeavour sciencepoint. It was extremely important for me to count on his expertise and knowledge on scientific writing, and in particular on grants.

I owe him a lot and thank him for this.

Malte Beringer, Jan 2024