Dr. Maria Molina, scientific director and leader of the Pneumology research group at IDIBELL, as well as head of the Pulmonary Interstitium Functional Unit of the Pneumology Service of the Bellvitge University Hospital, has been awarded the Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research awarded annually by the College of Physicians of Barcelona (COMB). The awards ceremony will take place on December 1 at the Auditori Axa in Barcelona.
Dr. Molina has a degree in Medicine and Surgery (1998), a PhD in Biomedicine and is a professor at the University of Barcelona (UB). In 2008 she joined IDIBELL and the Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB), where, since then, she has led the Pneumology research laboratory. In addition, she has been the scientific director of IDIBELL since 2024 and since 2023 of the CIBER of respiratory diseases (CIBERES), a state public consortium promoted by the Carlos III Health Institute and the Ministry of Science and Innovation that promotes collaborative research throughout the State.
A full career with a clear vocation: to help patients
Her professional career has focused on the study and care of interstitial lung diseases (ILD). She has focused her research especially on understanding the development and regulation of pulmonary fibrosis, combining basic and clinical research with the will to carry out cross-sectional, translational research with rapidly applicable health results to improve the survival and quality of life of patients.
Her research was of particular global interest during the COVID19 pandemic, with the first clinical trial in PostCovid fibrosis led and published in 2025. She has been the promoter of three more clinical trials, involving more than 200 professionals, and principal investigator in 32. “Biomedical research is a team effort: without the 200+ people who work in these clinical trials, it would be impossible to attend the more than 900 patients we now have throughout the territory,” Dr. Molina emphasizes.
She is currently leading, among others, the PRECISION-ILD Precision Medicine project, which aims to improve the early diagnosis and personalized treatment of pulmonary fibrosis by searching for useful biomarkers and applying data interpretation techniques based on artificial intelligence and computational modeling.
Beyond the professional side
In addition, the more human side of her work can be seen in [RE]accions Bellvitge, the IDIBELL audiovisual series released this September, where she starred in the fourth episode with actor, patient and friend Christian Guiriguet. During the episode, she shared the difficulty of her professional career, “most doctors are doctors by vocation because it is a very demanding path, it is not easy”, stressing the importance of empathising with patients and transmitting confidence at all times. For her, taking off her lab coat and getting in front of the camera was “a different experience, but you learn from everything. And it is very useful because the objective is worth it: to reach the population and reach the streets.”
The Excellence Awards, a recognition of professionals
The Professional Excellence Awards were presented for the first time in 2004 and, therefore, this year they celebrate their 20th anniversary. These awards are a recognition given to doctors from different fields of care who, throughout their career, have stood out for representing essential values of the medical profession, such as honesty, commitment, altruism and integrity.
Nearly 950 professionals and a total of 49 healthcare teams have been awarded the CoMB Professional Excellence Awards over the last twenty years. The CoMB awards professionals in six different fields: hospital care medicine, primary care medicine, medicine in other care areas, biomedical research, medical education and, finally, humanities, cooperation and management. Four awards are also given to healthcare teams to recognise the leadership and excellence of doctors working as a team.
The Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) is a research centre created in 2004 specialising in cancer, neuroscience, translational medicine and regenerative medicine. It has a team of more than 1,500 professionals who, from the 73 research groups, generate more than 1,400 scientific articles per year. IDIBELL is owned by the Bellvitge University Hospital and the Viladecans Hospital of the Catalan Institute of Health, the Catalan Institute of Oncology, the University of Barcelona and the City Council of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
IDIBELL is a member of the Campus of International Excellence of the University of Barcelona HUBc and is part of the CERCA institution of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2009 it became one of the first five Spanish research centres accredited as a health research institute by the Carlos III Health Institute. In addition, it is part of the “HR Excellence in Research” program of the European Union and is a member of EATRIS and REGIC. Since 2018, IDIBELL has been an Accredited Centre of the AECC Scientific Foundation (FCAECC).