Research news

List of news published in the Press Room on research and innovation

  • Unite! Seed Fund for students, researchers and professors: call for applications open until 20 March

    The 2025 Unite! Seed Fund offers financial support to students, researchers and professors who wish to initiate joint initiatives between at least three Unite! universities. The deadline for all submissions is 20 March.

  • Protecting marine ecosystems from ship-induced noise pollution

    The UPC’s Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) participates in a European project focused on developing technologies to reduce underwater noise pollution caused by maritime traffic, which poses a threat to marine ecosystems. The LAB will assess the effectiveness of noise reduction systems installed on five vessels.

  • Fractus and the UPC create a technological hub to develop deep tech solutions

    Fractus and the UPC have agreed to create the Fractus-UPC Deep Tech Hub, a research centre where deep technologies will be designed and improved so as to develop disruptive technological solutions based on scientific challenges with great potential and social impact. Fractus is one of the first spin-offs that emerged from the UPC.

  • The new space mission by the UPC NanoSat Lab for Earth observation RITA/ 3 Cat-6 successfully launched

    The payload RITA/³Cat-6 is now in orbit. It has been developed by doctoral students at the UPC NanoSat Lab and integrated into the Arab nanosatellite ALainSat-1. The UPC’s space payload carries instruments to gather data on sea salinity and soil humidity, and to measure vegetation status.

  • Advancing space exploration: a pioneering experiment in cryogenic fuel management in space

    Researchers from the UPC’s Space Exploration Laboratory are contributing to the development of advanced technologies for the storage and refuelling of cryogenic propellants in microgravity conditions. This technology, which will be key to driving space exploration and advancing Europe’s space transportation ecosystem, will be validated through an in-orbit experiment—the first of its kind in Europe.

  • International award for a UPC project to pave the way for the shipyard of the future

    Coordinated by Xavier Martínez Garcia, a professor at the UPC’s FNB and a researcher at CIMNE, FIBRE4YARDS is developing new composite material manufacturing technologies that enable a redefinition of shipyards, aiming to minimise environmental impact, improve vessel quality and reduce construction costs. The initiative has won the Maritime Transportation & Shipbuilding category of the JEC Innovation Awards—prestigious awards recognised as a benchmark in the field of advanced materials.

  • Transforming the construction sector towards a circular economy: DISCOVER, a new project led by the UPC

    The UPC leads the European project DISCOVER, an innovative initiative to reduce construction and demolition waste through artificial intelligence technologies, advanced robotics and building information modelling (BIM). With the aim of transforming the sector into a more sustainable and efficient model, DISCOVER focuses on material reuse and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Airgilab, the first living lab that regenerates building air with horticultural crops, is presented at the UPC’s ESEIAAT

    A greenhouse for urban agriculture, connected to classroom 3.07 and an office at the Terrassa School of Industrial, Aerospace and Audiovisual Engineering (ESEIAAT), absorbs CO2 from these spaces and transforms it into oxygen through photosynthesis. The clean air is recirculated back into the classroom if the conditions are suitable. This is how theAir quality & Green Infrastructure Living Lab (Airgilab) works, it is the first living lab to regenerate building air using agricultural crops. It was created by the Construction Research and Innovation Group (GRIC) of the UPC.

  • Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton to be awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the UPC

    On Thursday 18 October, the UPC will award an honorary doctoral degree to the American computer scientist, mathematician and engineer Margaret Hamilton, who coined the term ‘software engineering’ 50 years ago, during the NASA’s first Apollo missions. The nomination was approved by the Governing Council and promoted by the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB), as part of the School’s 40th anniversary celebrations. The event coincides with the first Barcelona Grad Cohort Workshop.

  • The impact of animation cinema on visual fatigue

    A team of researchers from the Terrassa School of Optics and Optometry (FOOT) and the Image Processing and Multimedia Technology Centre (CITM) have conducted a study on the relationship between the visual aesthetics of animation cinema and visual fatigue. The results of the research were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

  • Molecular mechanism causing severe cardiac arrhythmia identified

    Researchers from the UPC’s Computational Biology and Complex Systems Group (BIOCOM-SC) and the Heart Rhythm Analysis and Control Group (ANCORA) and other international scientists have identified one of the molecular mechanisms underlying cardiac alternans. It is an alteration of heart rhythm that is critical to the induction of ventricular fibrillation, a potentially fatal arrhythmia. The discovery was published in the journal Circulation Research (AHA Journals) and paves the way for new pharmacological treatments.

  • A study led by the UPC and the IEEC has determined the mass and radius of one of the oldest stars in our galaxy for the first time

    A study led by the researcher Alberto Rebassa-Mansergas, from the UPC and the IEEC, has determined the mass and radius of one of the oldest stars in our galaxy for the first time and validated the theoretical mass-radius relations for such stars. The results of this study are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

  • The CIMNE, technological partner in the REALQUIRUR project

    The International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE) is participating in a project promoted by the J. Torrent Institute at the El Pilar Hospital to apply augmented reality in open liver surgery.

  • The UPC ranks higher in the 2019 Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranking

    The UPC climbs six positions, so that it now ranks 81st in Europe and 1st among technical universities in Spain in the 2019 Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranking drawn up by Reuters. The ranking lists the top 100 European universities that contribute the most to progress in science and technological innovation and to the promotion of global economic development.

  • Some piezoelectric materials may be ‘fakes’

    A team of researchers has discovered that the most widespread technique for characterising piezoelectric properties—the ability of some materials to generate electricity when subjected to mechanical stress—can yield ‘false positives’ due to flexoelectricity. The study, which is the result of the collaboration between the Numerical Methods Laboratory (LaCàN) at the UPC and the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), will facilitate research of the application of these materials in pressure sensors and electric nanogenerators.

  • A thesis on Paulista Avenue in the Brazilian city of São Paulo was awarded the Manuel de Solà-Morales European Prize in the field of urbanism

    The architect Renata Priore Lima, a professor at the Architecture and Urbanism College of São Paulo (Brazil), received the Manuel de Solà-Morales European Prize in urbanism in its second edition for her doctoral thesis “Plugin: interfaces urbanas en los nuevos centros lineales: el caso de la Avenida Paulista”, defended at the UPC. Three additional awards were also given to finalist projects at the award ceremony, which took place on 19 March at the UPC’s Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB).

  • The UPC participates in a new 'spin-off' MiWEndo Solutions, which is to develop a device to improve the early detection of colorectal cancer

    Supported by UPF, the UPC, Hospital Clínic and ICREA, it will use microwave technology to automate the detection of polyps during colonoscopies.

  • The UPC, among the world’s 500 best universities and the top 100 in four subjects

    In the 2019 edition of the Taiwan Ranking, the UPC ranks among the world’s 500 best universities and 138th in the field of Engineering, in which it remains the leader among Spanish universities. The University is also listed among the world’s top 100 in four subjects: Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Computer Science.

  • Tuberculosis has shaped human society since the Stone Age

    Researchers from the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), the Comparative Medicine and Bioimaging Centre (CMCiB-IGTP), CIBERES and the UPC have discovered, by means of a mathematical model that combines biological, anthropological and historical data, that not only have humans continued to survive despite tuberculosis infections, but tuberculosis has probably played a key role in shaping human society as we know it. The article has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

  • The motility of a unicellular aquatic organism could inspire new robotic crawlers

    A team of researchers led by professor and researcher Marino Arroyo, from the UPC and the IBEC, discovered Euglena cells’ ability to crawl remarkably fast in narrow spaces. These unicellular organisms live in water and perform harmoniously coordinated, large-amplitude cell body deformations, in a behaviour known as metaboly. The results of the research, published in Nature Physics, could inspire new applications in the field of medical robotics.

  • The UPC’s BIOCOM-SC Group explores the use of artificial intelligence to forecast the evolution of COVID-19 in Europe

    The UPC’s Computational Biology and Complex Systems Group (BIOCOM-SC) partners with Facebook Artificial Intelligence to train, test and calibrate new artificial intelligence models developed by the company to forecast the evolution of the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and Austria. The aim of the Group, with the collaboration of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute and the support of Facebook, is to check whether the algorithm can be adapted to make one-month predictions, first in Southern Europe and then in Europe as a whole.

  • Top Spanish University in Horizon Europe funding

    The UPC heads the list of Spanish universities in terms of funding raised and the number of projects under Horizon Europe. With 161 projects, it has obtained 83 million euros in funding so far.

  • Leonardo Grant awarded to researcher Matias Carandell for innovation in marine ecosystem monitoring

    Matias Carandell Widmer, a researcher at the UPC’s Department of Electronic Engineering and at the Technological Development Centre for Remote Acquisition and Data Processing Systems (SARTI), has been awarded a Leonardo Grant from the BBVA Foundation to improve the acquisition and transmission of oceanographic data. The project focuses on integrating emerging buoys into autonomous marine monitoring platforms to provide real- time data access and allow researchers to more effectively address the deterioration of ocean biodiversity.

  • UPC, Esade and IED Barcelona students develop innovative solutions to guarantee access to treated water in conjunction with CERN

    Six teams of 34 university students of 14 different nationalities have developed prototypes after months of work with CERN scientists within the framework of the Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) program.

  • The coast of Vilanova i la Geltrú has been recognised as the first hope spot in the Iberian Peninsula to promote whale conservation

    Vilanova i la Geltrú coastal waters have been recognised as the first marine hope spot in the Peninsula by Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue foundation. In a pioneering project, the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) will study and monitor fin whales and other marine species in this area by using innovative non-invasive technology. The project was launched at the LAB in Vilanova i la Geltrú’s fishing port on 4 October.

  • The UPC leads a project to develop faster, lower-power processors for artificial intelligence

    The European Commission grants three million euros in funding to the WiPLASH project within the framework of the FET-Open call. It aims to prototype miniaturised wireless graphene antennas in the terahertz band to provide future computing platforms with plasticity and reconfigurability. The project involves seven European universities and companies, under the supervision of Sergi Abadal, a researcher at the UPC’s Department of Computer Architecture.

  • A UPC-led project to restore European coasts with natural solutions and blue carbon underway

    The Maritime Engineering Laboratory (LIM) of the UPC is leading a European project to restore the coast and adapt it to climate change. It is a shock plan for the next four years funded by the European Union under the European Green Deal. Pilot projects will be carried out on the Ebro Delta and other locations in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the North Sea.

  • The FNB contributes innovative technology to reduce fuel consumption on the Open Arms rescue vessel

    Developed by the UPC’s Barcelona School of Nautical Studies with the support of the Fractus-UPC Deep Tech Hub, the project relies on machine learning technologies to reduce fuel consumption while the Open Arms vessel navigates. By minimising the ship’s fuel needs and operational costs, the NGO can redirect some of the savings towards rescue missions.

  • Unite! students board the U!Train to analyse the European railway network

    On 2 September, 30 European students —five from the UPC— are boarding a train from Barcelona to Grenoble, in France. The students will participate in a mapathon, write a manifesto on green mobility in Europe and submit it to EU leaders.

  • Deep tech, world-changing technologies take centre stage in the new ‘Algorrritmes UPC’

    The latest episode of the Algorrritmes UPC podcast delves into deep tech: disruptive solutions to global challenges with immense transformative potential. This episode features Carles Puente, Fractus co-founder and a professor at the ETSETB, and Eneko Ibarlucea, a UPC alumnus.