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ICMAB receives the Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence Award for the third time consecutively

Our proposal, a Materials Transition for Tomorrow’s World, was successful in the highly competitive Severo Ochoa call. It will help fund the ICMAB’s strategic research lines, outreach and knowledge transfer activities until 2027. The initiative will consolidate and foster our internal collaborations, focusing on sustainable solutions to challenges in health, electronics and energy.

The Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence accreditations – named after the Spanish Nobel Laureate – are given to research centres that can demonstrate internationally leading science and a convincing vision for advancing the frontiers of knowledge. They are part of the Institutional Strengthening program within the State Plan for Scientific Research and Innovation (Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica Técnica y de Innovación) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades), and are awarded by the Spanish Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación). These awards are granted to centres that show state-of-the-art competitive programs and that showcase an excellent relationship with civil society and foster knowledge transfer for new technologies.

The award, given to ICMAB for the "Materials Transition for Tomorrow’s World” (Matrans42) project, is not only an honour, it provides a source of funding that will help the ICMAB make defined strategic initiatives to help advance in the quality of our research, knowledge transfer and communication of science.

This is the third time the ICMAB has received this recognition. The first time was in 2016, when the Severo Ochoa accreditation was received within the program “Smart FUNtional MATerials for social grand challenges” (FUNMAT). The program identified these grand challenges to be addressed: clean and secure energy, smart and sustainable electronics and smart nanomedicine. During the four years of the program, there was an 84% increase in personnel, with a 40% being new researchers.

The second time the Severo Ochoa was received (in 2020) for the "Functional Materials for a Better Future" (FUNFUTURE) project, with the goal of making a step forward as an international reference centre in the scientific and technological area of new materials. ICMAB 2020-2023 strategic plan tackled global grand challenges in ENERGY, ELECTRONICS and HEALTH from the materials science point of view.

Directors and representants of the awarded SO and MM centers

ICMAB Director and PI of the project David Amabilino said: “We are extremely happy and feel very fortunate to have been granted this award in an increasingly high quality scientific community in Spain. It shows that we are working excellently in many ways, and that we have identified well where we are going. Preparing the proposal was hard work, but participative and positive for the ICMAB. With the help of this AEI award, I´m really excited to see what we can achieve in the next four years.

This recognition and funding will help us to advance scientifically in areas not addressed by individual research groups, to transfer our discoveries to applications, to spread knowledge widely, and to attract, train and foster talent in our Institute. The programme is built on the very strong foundation of the previous awards, Xavier Obradors and Rosa Palacín ran those enormously successful Severo Ochoa programmes that have transformed our Institute, and provided us with a springboard toward further impact in science and society.

It is especially important to emphasise the diversity of people and the inclusive approaches that are essential to Matrans42. The leaders of the research areas, Marta Mas, Anna Laromaine and Alex Ponrouch, have already demonstrated their ability to involve all the people in setting the various challenges, and the implication of researchers at all levels and our support staff is essential.”

Why the acronym Matrans42? “It is clearly short for MAterials TRANStion 4 2morrow’s world, but it jumped out for other reasons, including that 42, apart from being the meaning of “Life, the Universe and Everything” (from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, is a Catalan number (named after a famous mathematician), that are a particularly intriguing series of numbers, and of course we are in Catalonia!”

Marta Mas-Torrent (left) and David Amabilino (right) with Diana Morant Ripoll (center), from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities

Take a look at the photo album of the awards ceremony here (5 September 2024).

Other awarded centers

This call has introduced two new Severo Ochoa centers, the Nanoscience and Materials Institute of Aragon of the CSIC and the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, and has validated the recognition of 8 centres that already had it during the last years. There are also three new Maria de Maeztu centers, including our neighbours, the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute (IMB-CNM, CSIC), who are joining three other Units that are renovating their projects, which makes a total of 6 Maria de Maeztu centres and 10 Severo Ochoa centres in this round.

In total, 5 of the new Severo Ochoa and one new María de Maeztu accreditations are for CSIC institutes. Furthermore, 5 of the new Severo Ochoa accreditations and 2 of the new María de Maeztu units are for research centres in Catalonia. Great news for the CSIC and the Catalan research area!

Severo Ochoa 2024-2027:

AGR-INSTITUT DE RECERCA CONTRA LA LEUCEMIA JOSEP CARRERAS
INSTITUT DE RECERCA BIOMEDICA
INSTITUTO DE CIENCIA DE MATERIALES DE BARCELONA ICMAB CSIC
FUNDACION PRIVADA INSTITUT DE BIOENGINYERIA DE CATALUNYA
INSTITUTO DE NANOCIENCIA Y MATERIALES DE ARAGON CSIC
ISGLOBAL - CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIÓN
INSTITUTO DE FÍSICA CORPUSCULAR (IFIC CSIC-UV)
AGR-CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION ECOLOGIA Y APLICACIONES FORESTALES CCT
INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS MATEMATICAS CSIC
CENTRO NACIONAL DE BIOTECNOLOGIA (CNB) CSIC

Maria de Maeztu 2024-2027:

CENTRE CIÈNCIA I ENGINYERIA MULTIESCALA (CCEM)
POLYMAT
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION MENTE, CEREBRO Y COMPORTAMIENTO
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION DE FISICA DE LA MATERIA CONDENSADA (IFIMAC)
INSTITUTO GALLEGO DE FISICA DE ALTAS ENERGIAS (IGFAE)
INSTITUTO DE MICROELECTRONICA DE BARCELONA - CENTRO NACIONAL DE MICROELECTRONICA (IMB – CNM - CSIC)

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Oriol

19 June 2024