BIST announces the five research projects to be included in a new edition of the Ignite programme

The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) today held the BIST Forum 2024 at the La Pedrera auditorium, the annual meeting to highlight the social and economic impact generated by frontier research. During this Forum, the five new multidisciplinary research projects between groups from the BIST community were announced as part of the 5th edition of the Ignite programme, promoted by BIST itself with the support of Barcelona City Council through a collaboration agreement with Barcelona Science and Universities.

The Forum brought together two hundred people from the scientific, political, economic and social worlds. Among them, the BIST community, made up of seven research centres -CRG, IBEC, ICFO, ICIQ, ICN2, IFAE, and IRB Barcelona-, the rectors of the universities UB, UAB, UPC and UPF, and the heads of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, the Cercle d’Economia, Foment del Treball and Barcelona Global. The President of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, opened the meeting, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, closed it.

During the meeting, the three main areas to which the search for the frontier made in Catalonia contributes were addressed: the expansion of knowledge, the change in the production model and the development of society. In addition, the different sessions of the meeting emphasised Catalonia’s exceptional capacity for scientific production, which in two decades has reached leading positions in Europe, and its potential to be the main source of industry in the 21st century.

The BIST Forum culminated with the announcement of five new multidisciplinary research projects between groups from the BIST community as part of the Ignite programme, which is supported by Barcelona City Council through Barcelona Science and Universities. Jaume Collboni gave the Forum’s closing speech, in which he defended Barcelona’s vocation as European scientific capital.

The Mayor stressed “the importance of people being aware of what they contribute and of the social return of frontier research, as well as the need to guarantee stable frameworks and funding for it to bear fruit”. Collboni added the need for the scientific community “to get involved in the debate on communication and transport infrastructures, such as the future of El Prat airport, in order to connect talent with talent from all over the world”.

Projects selected in the Ignite programme

The following are the projects that can benefit from this programme that rewards the pursuit of excellence and multidisciplinary approach within the BIST community:

• Nanolympics. Project led by researchers Nicoletta Liguori and Katherine Villa, from ICFO and ICIQ, respectively, which seeks to design nanometric compounds for applications such as water decontamination.

• MOLOPEC. Led by postdoctoral researchers Carles Ros, Sergi Grau and Sara Martí-Sanchez, from ICFO, ICIQ and ICN2, respectively. It aims to manufacture photoactive organic materials and molecular catalysts. The new materials would contribute to improving solar energy conversion, storage and distribution.

• TriBioNics. Collaboration between ICN2 researcher Elena del Corro and IBEC’s Samuel Sánchez Ordónez that combines for the first time three innovative technologies: 3D skeletal muscle printing, graphene bioelectronics and triboelectronics. The aim is to mould skeletal muscle and, among other things, develop new therapies for rehabilitation.

• bRaiNA. It is led by IBEC postdoctoral researcher Daniel Gonzalez-Carter and CRG researcher Fátima Gebauer. The project will combine the former’s expertise in brain vascular cell biology and the latter’s expertise in microRNA technologies with the aim of finding new treatments for brain pathologies.

• DendriPhotoSomes. A collaborative project between ICREA professors Pablo Ballester of ICIQ and César Rodríguez-Emmenegger of IBEC. They seek to generate artificial membranes to carry out artificial photosynthesis reactions, with the aim of converting and storing solar energy.

About BIST

The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) is a public-private partnership that combines and multiplies the efforts of excellence and impact of the seven CERCA centres that constitute it: Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC ), Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Catalan Institute of Chemical Research (ICIQ), Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE) and Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona (IRB Barcelona). The Board of Trustees is made up of the Banc Sabadell Foundation, the Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation, the Cellex Foundation, the FemCAT Foundation, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the directors of the seven centres, and nine scientists of international repute.