The plan will begin to be rolled out across Catalonia imminently, starting this very year.

With an investment of €300 million, the new territorial plan promoted by the Government strengthens Catalonia’s knowledge ecosystem with a strategic and sustainable outlook.

One of the first measures will be a substantial increase in the core funding of the 42 CERCA centres. At the same time, the Research and Universities Ministry has designed a new assessment model for these centres to ensure that future investments are allocated according to criteria of scientific excellence, quality, and social impact.

This dual strategy—greater resources and a renewed evaluation system—will allow the centres to gain financial stability and medium- and long-term planning capacity, while also enhancing their international competitiveness and their ability to attract and retain top-level talent.

According to the Minister for Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat:
“The increase in the core funding of the CERCA centres is a decisive step towards consolidating our research system within the international arena. This action must go hand in hand with a new evaluation model on which we have been working over recent months, in order to ensure that we compete on equal terms with the best research and innovation ecosystems in Europe. We are giving the centres the stability they need to plan strategically and to take on projects with social and economic impact.”

Xavier Luri Carrascoso is now officially the new director of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).

Since September 1, Luri has taken over from the former director, Ignasi Ribas Canudas, who led the Institute from 2017 until last august.

Xavier Luri (Ribes de Freser, Girona, 1966) holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona, where he has been a professor in the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics since 2007 and a full professor since 2021.

In addition to his teaching career, which he began in the early 1990s, Luri has built a solid track record as a researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), one of the IEEC’s research units, where he served as director from 2018 until the day before taking office as the new director of the IEEC. Since 2023, he has also been a member of the European Space Sciences Committee, an institution that provides independent scientific advice on space science to organizations such as the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG)’s Board of Trustees has today appointed Professor Monica Bettencourt-Dias as its new Director. Professor Bettencourt-Dias is the first woman to lead the CRG since it was founded in the year 2000.

Professor Bettencourt-Dias, who led the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal between 2018 and 2023 and is currently Group Leader at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, is expected to take up the post in 2026. She succeeds the CRG’s long-serving Director, ICREA Research Professor Dr Luis Serrano, who will continue to maintain a research group at the institute.

Born in Portugal in 1973, Professor Mónica Bettencourt-Dias has built an international career at the forefront of cell and molecular biology. She completed her PhD at University College London investigating the regenerative properties of salamanders. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, she made key discoveries on cell proliferation, before returning to Portugal in 2006 to establish her research group at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (IGC).

Professor Bettencourt-Dias

She succeeds Dr Elías Campo, who has held the position since 2017.

The appointment of the new director followed an international call and an open selection process.

Today, Thursday 29 May 2025, the Board of Trustees of IDIBAPS has appointed Dr Susana Puig as the new director of the institution during an extraordinary meeting.

Dr Puig leads the IDIBAPS research group ‘Melanoma: Imaging, Genetics and Immunology‘, heads the Dermatology Department at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, and is a professor at the University of Barcelona. This triple affiliation exemplifies the campus model that integrates Research, Teaching and Healthcare, a model that will be further strengthened with the construction of the new Clínic – UB Campus on Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona in the coming years.

She is also a group leader at CIBERER and a board member of several scientific societies. She earned her degree in Medicine at the University of Barcelona, specialising in Dermatology in 1992 and obtaining her PhD in 2000. She has participated in over 30 competitive research projects and more than 50 clinical trials, resulting in the publication of over 500 scientific articles and the supervision of nearly 40 doctoral theses and master’s dissertations.

This is the first time in the nearly thirty-year history of IDIBAPS that a woman has held this position. Previous directors include Drs Joan Rodés, Ramon Gomis and Elías Campo.

The Board of Trustees of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute has approved the appointment of Dr Ari Melnick as the new Director of the centre. Dr Melnick will take on the leadership of the Institute, which focuses on leukaemia and other haematological malignancies research.

Dr Ari Melnick has been appointed the new Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute by the Board of Trustees. Founded in 2010 by the Government of Catalonia and the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Foundation and based in Badalona, the Josep Carreras Institute specialises in biomedical research and precision medicine in the field of leukaemia and other hematologic malignancies.

Dr Ari Melnick brings extensive experience in haematological research to the Josep Carreras Institute. He graduated in Medicine from the University of Buenos Aires in 1990 and has worked at prestigious institutions such as the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Weill Cornell Cancer Center (New York, USA), where he has led the “Hematologic Malignancies Program” and been “Gebroe Family” Professor since 2013. Internationally recognised in the field of haematological diseases and cancer epigenetics, Dr Melnick was among the first to develop rationally designed transcription factor inhibitors and conduct large-scale epigenomic studies in humans. His research demonstrated that aberrant epigenetic programming is a hallmark of cancer, and that epigenetic diversity is a fundamental determinant of tumour fitness and unfavourable clinical outcomes. He has authored more than 360 manuscripts, and therapeutic approaches he developed and identified have been approved by the FDA or moved to phase III clinical trials. For this he has been awarded the American Society of Hematology Ernest Beutler Prize in Translational Research. Dr Melnick serves on the Board of Directors of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

The 2024 National Research Award for Young Talent is awarded ex aequo to researchers Eva Maria Novoa (CRG) and Xavier Ros Oton (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, UB).

i2CAT and Sateliot receive the National Award for Public-Private Partnership in R&I.

Ecomemb SL, a spin-off from ICRA and UdG, receives the National Innovation Award for the Creation of a Science-Based Company.

The awards, announced on Friday, 21 March, by the Minister for Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat, recognise research excellence in Catalonia across various categories.

The 2024 National Research Award has been granted to Professor Núria Sebastián, an expert in Psychology who served as Vice President of CERCA from 2017 to 2022. Professor Sebastián has been recognised for her pioneering research in cognitive neuroscience. Holding a PhD in Psychology from the University of Barcelona (UB), she leads the Speech Acquisition and Processing (SAP) research group at the Center for Brain Cognition (CBC). Her work has positioned her as a global pioneer in the study of bilingualism from a cognitive and neural perspective.

Young Talent: Eva Maria Novoa (CRG), a Global Reference in Epitranscriptomics

The 2024 National Research Award for Young Talent has been granted ex aequo to Eva Maria Novoa, an ICREA researcher and leader of the Epitranscriptomics and RNA Dynamics Research Group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). Novoa is an expert in biochemical modifications of RNA and has developed new algorithms to map and quantify these modifications, establishing herself as an international leader in nanopore sequencing technologies.

i2CAT and Sateliot: Positioning Catalonia in the Space Economy
The National Award for Public-Private Partnership in Research and Innovation has been given to the joint work between the i2CAT Foundation and the company Sateliot, which has placed Catalonia at the forefront of the new space economy. Their collaboration has led to milestones such as the launch of the nanosatellites Enxaneta, Menut, and Minairó, which have contributed to improving global Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

ICRA: Water Research with Business Impact
The National Innovation Award for the Creation of a Science-Based Company has been awarded to the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) and the University of Girona (UdG) for the founding of Ecomemb SL. This recognition highlights their ability to transform research into innovative solutions in water management and the circular economy.

Finally, the new Award for Promoting Knowledge Transfer has been granted to the paediatric innovation hub i4KIDS at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, led by Arnau Valls, principal investigator at the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute.

The Minister acknowledged the awards as a reaffirmation of Catalonia’s commitment to a diverse, open, and socially driven knowledge system: “This year’s awardees remind us that research and innovation are not the preserve of any single field, but the result of collective efforts between universities, research centres, businesses, social organisations, and citizens. And when this effort is recognised and projected, it becomes a driving force for the transformation of the entire country.”

The National Research Awards are granted by the Government and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI).

The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) is launching a call for applications for the position of Director. The initial appointment is for a four-year term, with the possibility of renewal upon approval by the Board of Trustees.

About the IEEC 

The IEEC focuses its research efforts on the study of the Cosmos and the Earth as a planet, through a powerful programme for research, development and technological innovation in the framework of scientific missions and projects.

Role and Responsibilities 

The Director will have the following general duties and responsibilities:

• Manage, organise, execute and monitor the activities of the IEEC.
• Define and implement the institute’s Strategic Plan in line with advisory recommendations.
• Develop the annual activity program for approval by the Board of Trustees.
• Direct, organize, manage, and execute actions aimed at obtaining the necessary resources and sources of income to achieve the objectives.
• Lead research, development, knowledge and technology transfer, innovation, and training activities, as well as the internal organization.
• Supervise the selection procedures for attracting talent and recruiting the scientific and technical personnel, or for accepting the affiliation of scientific and technical personnel from other institutions.
• Formalize the affiliation of scientific and technical personnel.
• Promote the professional development within the Institute.
• Execute Board of Trustees’ directives and oversee compliance.
• Represent the IEEC in academic, industrial, and public forums.
• Maintain regular communication with CERCA regarding institutional progress.
• Organise regular meetings of the SAB and implement the recommendations upon approval by the Board of Trustees.

The reception of applications ends on 30/04/2025

IDIBAPS is seeking applicants with a proven-track record in leadership, a distinguished record of scientific excellence and the innovative thinking necessary to lead a dynamic organisation.

Last September, a new call for selecting a new IDIBAPS director was opened. The institution’s Board of Trustees has agreed that the call was unsuccessful and it has now been reopened

The selected candidate will commit to the challenge of increasing the IDIBAPS scientific reputation and boosting the institute’s basic, translational and clinical research towards societal and health impact.

Calendar

• 3 March – Call opening.
• 31 March – Application deadline.

€200,000 allocated to CERCA research centres in Catalonia for initiatives promoting and using Catalan.

The Research and Universities Ministry has launched a new call to enhance the presence of Catalan in the knowledge system: grants for CERCA research centres in Catalonia to implement initiatives fostering and using the Catalan language within research institutes. Administered by the AGAUR (Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca), these new grants are part of the measures outlined in the Plan for Strengthening the Catalan Language in the University and Research System of Catalonia. They complement other ongoing programmes such as the Interlingua grants for promoting Catalan in universities, and funding for university textbooks and doctoral theses written in Catalan.

With a total budget of €200,000, each CERCA centre may submit up to four projects or initiatives, with a minimum funding of €2,000 per project. Applications must be submitted by 31 March. Eligible actions under this call include the design and implementation of sustainable multilingualism management initiatives to promote Catalan in research centres, the organisation of linguistic integration programmes for non-Catalan speakers joining the institutes, and the dissemination of resources for learning Catalan and using Catalan terminology in the scientific field, among others.

Grants for Doctoral Theses in Catalan

The Research and Universities Ministry also awarded grants at the end of last year for doctoral theses written in Catalan (TDCAT 2024) and submitted to Catalan universities. With an investment of nearly €80,000, a total of 129 grants were awarded, each worth approximately €600.

Of the 129 grants awarded:
– 63 were for theses written entirely in Catalan.
– 32 were for theses completed with the attainment of a doctorate with European distinction, written in Catalan and another official language of the European Union.
– 34 were for theses structured as a compendium of publications, where the non-published parts or chapters were written in Catalan.

An Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Marta Sanz-Solé was appointed Vice-President of I-CERCA in June 2023.

The Government has also honoured Eudald Carbonell, founder of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA).

Today marks the ceremony for the presentation of the Creu de Sant Jordi to Dr Marta Sanz-Solé (Sabadell, 1952) in recognition of her outstanding contributions and career in the fields of science and mathematics.

With an extensive professional trajectory, Marta Sanz-Solé specialises in probability theory. Her research focuses on stochastic analysis, particularly stochastic differential equations and partial differential equations.

A PhD graduate of the University of Barcelona (UB), she served as a lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) before becoming a professor at UB, where she joined the research group on stochastic processes. Between 1993 and 1996, she served as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at UB and later as Vice-President of the Division of Experimental and Mathematical Sciences (2000–2003) at the same institution.

Dr Sanz-Solé was President of the European Mathematical Society (2011–2014), becoming the first woman to hold this position. She has also served on scientific and management committees for various mathematics research centres across Europe and chaired the PE1 (Mathematics) panel for the Consolidator Grants in the 2019 and 2021 calls of the European Research Council.

Her academic excellence has been recognised with numerous awards and honours, including the Narcís Monturiol Medal for Scientific and Technological Excellence from the Government of Catalonia (1998), Fellowship of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2011), membership of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (2016) and the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (2019), and honorary membership of the College of Economists of Catalonia, among others.

In the same ceremony, the Government will honour Eudald Carbonell, an archaeologist, professor of Prehistory, and founder and director of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) from 2004 to 2015, for his significant scientific and outreach contributions in archaeology and prehistory.

Dr Carbonell has led numerous excavations, most notably his role as co-director of the Atapuerca archaeological site, one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites. He has also directed excavations at the Abric Romaní site, a key resource for understanding Neanderthal life. In 1997, he received the Prince of Asturias Award and, in 2009, the National Culture Award.

Of the twenty individual medals awarded this year, seven have been granted to professionals in science and research. Today, the Creu de Sant Jordi is also presented to:

– Claudi Alsina, Professor of Mathematics;
– Pilar Bayer, Emeritus Professor of Algebra;
– Carme Torras, mathematician, computer scientist, and writer;
– Elia Torroella, pharmacist;
– Jordi Camí, Third Vice-President of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, founder of the CRG and PRBB, and Director of the IMIM (now the Hospital del Mar Research Institute) from 1985 to 2005.