Research news

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

  • ICFO researchers create an ultradilute quantum liquid made from ultra-cold atoms

    The Institute of Photonic Sciencies (ICFO) researchers create a novel type of liquid one hundred million times more dilute than water and one million times thinner than air. The experiments, published in Science, exploit a fascinating quantum effect to produce droplets of this exotic phase of matter.

  • The UPC participates in the 5GBarcelona initiative to turn Catalonia into a European 5G digital hub

    The Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council, Mobile World Capital Barcelona, the i2CAT Foundation, the Telecommunications Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTTC), Atos and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have presented the agreement they have signed in support of the 5GBarcelona initiative, which aims to turn the city and Catalonia into one of the European digital innovation hubs in the field of 5G technology.

  • ICFO researchers try out a stroke device at the Hospital de Sant Pau

    A non-invasive bedside optical device has been used for the first time at the Hospital de la Santa Creu and Sant Pau in Barcelona to monitor the treatment of patients with acute ischaemic stroke in real time. The mechanism, developed by ICFO researchers led by ICREA professor Turgut Durduran, has the potential to become a future tool for non-invasive medical monitoring.

  • The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics warns that noise pollution is threatening the natural balance of the oceans

    Within the programme The Winds of Change, the Swiss Ocean Mapping Expedition is making a four-year (2015-2019) journey round the world in the wake of Magellan on board the Fleur de Passion sailing boat. The expedition has already identified many zones of high emission of methane and carbon dioxide between Mactan in the Philippines and Singapore, where the expedition arrived on 13 March. Another project, 20,000 Sounds Under the Seas, is being carried out on board the boat by the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). One of this project’s findings is that the only area of the globe free of noise pollution is between French Polynesia and Australia.

  • The Nativity Facade of the Sagrada Família, in 3D

    The UPC’s Virtual Innovation in Modelling Architecture and the City Laboratory (VIMAC) has participated in creating a digital model of the elevation of the Nativity Facade of the Expiatory Church of the Holy Family (Sagrada Família). The project was led by the assistant architect of the Sagrada Família, David Puig Bermejo. The study will be used to analyse the state of the facade and will form the basis for future studies that will determine the pathologies to be taken into account in the restoration.

  • Researchers from UPC, Brazil and Australia get the first images and sounds of an observatory installed in the Amazon

    The Applied Bioacoustics Laboratory (LAB) of UPC and scientists from Brazil and Australia have installed in the Brazilian reserves of Mamirauá and Amanã the first two sensors for real-time monitoring of biodiversity in the Amazon. In the framework of the Providence project, this action will help fight the extinction of species in the rainforest.

  • The UPC leads a European project to study the behaviour of complex geometric networks

    The aim of the European project Combinatorics of Networks and Computation (CONNECT) is to understand complex geometric networks such as those that model the internet and the spread of infections. Coordinated by the UPC, the project connects researchers from 14 universities in Europe and the American continent.

  • Researchers from the UPC and the IAC discover one of the most massive neutron stars

    Using a pioneering method, researchers from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group of the UPC and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) have found a neutron star of about 2.3 Solar masses—one of the most massive ever detected. The study was published on the 23rd of May in The Astrophysical Journal and opens a new path of knowledge in many fields of astrophysics and nuclear physics.

  • Creation of the AMES Group-UPC Chair in design and innovation in the field of new biomaterials

    The AMES Group-UPC Chair, which was created at the Diagonal-Besòs Campus in Barcelona, will work in the field of additive manufacturing of porous metallic biomaterials for use in traumatology.

  • The UPC builds a plant to produce bio-products and bioenergy from wastewater using microalgae

    The Environmental Engineering and Microbiology Group (GEMMA) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has built a 30-m3 pilot plant for the production of bioproducts and bioenergy from microalgae grown in wastewater. The plant has been installed in the Agròpolis, an experimental site located in Viladecans and forming part of the UPC’s Baix Llobregat Campus.

  • Inauguration of Thinx | 5GBarcelona, an open laboratory for testing 5G technologies

    The initiative 5GBarcelona and Telefónica have inaugurated their Thinx | 5GBarcelona laboratory, a facility at startups, SMEs and corporations and designed to test and validate new services and applications with 5G technology.

  • Europe pilots cutting-edge technology to prevent natural disasters in a project coordinated by the UPC

    The Centre of Applied Research in Hydrometeorology (CRAHI) of the UPC is coordinating the ANYWHERE project, aimed at establishing a pan-European multi-hazard platform for faster analysis and anticipation of weather-induced risks prior to event occurrence. It will also improve response management in emergency situations and help exposed populations avert loss of life, damage to infrastructure and economic losses related to these events. For the first time in Europe, the first outcomes of the tools developed within the project will be presented this week in Barcelona.

  • The UPC celebrates 20 years of entrepreneurial spirit

    The UPC is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Innova Programme, a pioneering initiative in Catalonia and Spain focused on promoting the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the university community and fostering the creation of knowledge- and technology-based companies. As a result of this initiative, more than 300 companies have created 4,500 jobs, more than 500 patents have been applied for, and more than 200 technologies have been licensed as a result of research.

  • The ANYWHERE project will showcase their major achievements in Brussels

    The Centre of Applied Research in Hydrometeorology (CRAHI) of the UPC is coordinating the ANYWHERE project, aimed at establishing a pan-European multi-hazard platform for faster analysis and anticipation of weather-induced risks prior to event occurrence. It will also improve response management in emergency situations and help exposed populations avert loss of life, damage to infrastructure and economic losses related to these events. The project will showcase their major achievements in the Security Research Event 2018 to be held in Brussels this week.

  • The UPC, a major player in the development of Industry 4.0

    Of students now attending primary school, 63% will end up working in a job that does not yet exist. This disturbing fact is closely related to what is known as the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, which is transforming industry through a combination of production methods and advanced information technologies to make manufacturing adaptive and flexible. The main challenge is to make all the information available in real time by integrating the entities that make up the value chain.

  • European artificial intelligence leaders meet at the UPC in Barcelona to promote the use of this technology in the EU

    This meeting marks the starting point of the AI4EU project, which receives €20 million euros in funding from the European Commission and has 79 partners from 21 countries, among them 60 leading research centres. The objective is to provide users with artificial intelligence resources that favour scientific research and technological innovation. The AI4EU Ethics Observatory will also be created to guarantee a human-centred AI.

  • The UPC in Terrassa is leading the creation of new technologies for industrial wastewater treatment and reuse

    INTEXTER and the MCIA research group, both of which belong to the UPC and are located on the Terrassa Campus, launched the ELDE project with the aim of creating new technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse in the paper, chemical and leather tanning industries. INTEXTER also participates in the REGIREU project to evaluate the combination of two technologies for the reuse of effluents in new dyeing processes on a pilot scale. Two technology centres and six SMEs are also involved in these projects, which have a budget of over 4 million euros.

  • Researchers from BASF, the ALBA Synchrotron and the UPC propose a methodology to increase the strength of concrete

    Researchers from the UPC, the ALBA Synchrotron and the chemical company BASF have established how clays and superplasticisers interact in cement pastes using synchrotron light. These results pave the way for improving the design of new superplasticisers with enhanced tolerance to the clays contained in the sand used for concrete production.

  • A new study shows that chimpanzee gestural communication and human language follow the same linguistic patterns

    The researcher Ramon Ferrer, from the Relational Algorithmics, Complexity and Learnability Laboratory (LARCA) at the UPC, participated with foreign researchers in a study on linguistic laws in chimpanzees’ gestural communication. The study revealed that data compression underpins animal gestural communication.

  • Researchers have identified a plastic crystal that could be used as an eco-friendly coolant in refrigerators and air conditioners

    In a joint research project, researchers from the UPC’s Department of Physics, the University of Cambridge and the University of Barcelona have identified an eco-friendly solid that could replace hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrocarbons (HCs), which are highly toxic and flammable. These two types of gases are currently used in the vast majority of refrigerators, air conditioners and cooling systems. The research was recently published in Nature Communications.

  • The brain as an inspiration for future processors

    Researching the design of new intelligent computing systems inspired by the human brain is the goal of the “CoCoUnit: An Energy-Efficient Processing Unit for Cognitive Computing” project, led by Antonio González, a researcher from the Department of Computer Architecture at the UPC. He has received an Advanced Grant, the highest award granted by the European Research Council to investigators pursuing groundbreaking high-risk projects.

  • STAT-ON, a new device that helps monitor the symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s

    Developed of the UPC, the Sense4Care spin-off and the Centro Médico Teknon – Quirónsalud

  • A UPC researcher in Terrassa creates the first tomography map for diagnosing glaucoma

    Pablo Amil, a researcher from the research group in Nonlinear Dynamics, Nonlinear Optics and Lasers (DONLL) at the ESEIAAT, has created an objective model that classifies the degrees of the iridocorneal angle, a key element for assessing the severity of glaucoma. With this model, ophthalmologists will have a tool to help patients make a decision when considering surgery. The method has been developed in the framework of the European project Be-Optical and published this year in the journal Scientific Reports, from the publishers of Nature.

  • The BSC-CNS will be home to one of the largest European supercomputers: MareNostrum 5

    The Barcelona Supercomputing Center–Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) will host one of the pre-exascale supercomputers in the high-performance computer network promoted by the European Commission, namely MareNostrum 5. It will be a heterogeneous supercomputer adapted to the new requirements of supercomputer users that will emphasise artificial intelligence and will have a peak performance of 200 petaflops

  • The UPC is still the top Spanish university in obtaining funds from the H2020 programme

    The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) continues to be the first Spanish university in raising funds from the European framework programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020 (H2020), according to the provisional results of the latest reports by the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) for the period 2014–2018.

  • The UPC selected by the European Commission to build the new European university UNITE!

    The University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering - UNITE! is now a fact. The new technological university campus promoted by the European Commission with the participation of the UPC, the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, the Grenoble Institute of Technology, the Politecnico di Torino, TU Darmstadt, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Aalto University is an alliance that aims to create a common space for multidisciplinary training, cooperation in teaching and research, and knowledge transfer between regions.

  • Acoustic map of underwater noise pollution made by the crew of the Fleur de Passion

    The Ocean Mapping Expedition, which has returned to Seville after a four-year world tour aboard the Fleur de Passion sailing boat, mapped acoustic pollution in the ocean. The research project was led by the UPC’s Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB).

  • ICFO researchers design new health monitors that are flexible, transparent and based on graphene

    Researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) have developed a new class of flexible, transparent and low-power wearables based on graphene to monitor multiple vital signs, such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pulse oxygenation and exposure to UV radiation. The study has been recently published in the Science Advances journal.

  • ANYWHERE successfully develops tools and services to tackle the climate emergency

    ANYWHERE’s tools and services for preventing and managing extreme weather phenomena are now available in Europe. They were created in the framework of a European project coordinated by the UPC’s Centre of Applied Research in Hydrometeorology (CRAHI) and presented on 29 and 30 October in Brussels to an audience of 200 experts and European civil defence officers.

  • The new European university UNITE! takes off

    The first joint meeting of UNITE!, the University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering, will be held in Darmstadt (Germany) on 5 and 6 November. UNITE! is the new technological university campus promoted by the European Commission with the participation of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, the Grenoble Institute of Technology, the Politecnico di Torino, TU Darmstadt, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Aalto University.