Research news

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

  • Quantum internet goes hybrid

    Researchers from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), an associate institute of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), report the first demonstration of an elementary link of a hybrid quantum information network, using a cold atomic cloud and a doped crystal as quantum nodes and single telecom photons as information carriers. The study, published in Nature, demonstrates the communication and transmission of quantum information between two completely different types of quantum nodes placed in different labs. This achievement shows that it is possible to build a quantum hybrid network with heterogeneous elements that is fully compatible with the current fibre-optic telecommunication infrastructure.

  • Cosmic Research of the UPC’s ESEIAAT is the first Spanish team ever selected for the Spaceport America Cup

    The ESEIAAT’s Cosmic Research student team has presented LUCID, the rocket that has competed in the Spaceport America Cup in New Mexico, US, in June. It is the first Spanish team to ever participate in this competition, which brings together 1,700 students from universities around the world. The rocket was launched on June 20.

  • 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.

  • Greening school playgrounds improves quality of life in cities and helps deal with climate change

    After three years of work, a European project led by a team of researchers at the UOC and the UPC calls for cities to be built based on the urban planning principle of looking after shared, natural and climate-adapted spaces, particularly in school environments.

  • 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.

  • Maria Pau Ginebra, Eduard Alarcón, Marcel Guardia and Maria Teresa Martínez-Seara receive the 2018 ICREA Acadèmia distinctions

    UPC researchers Maria Pau Ginebra, Eduard Alarcón, Marcel Guardia and Maria Teresa Martínez-Seara are four of the forty-five researchers who received the 2018 ICREA Acadèmia distinctions on 30 April at the Palau de la Generalitat. The event was chaired by the minister for Business and Knowledge, Àngels Chacón, and attended by the minister for Universities and Research, Francesc Xavier Grau, and ICREA director and UPC professor Antonio Huerta.

  • The UPC among the 100 best universities in the world according to ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects

    The UPC maintains its position among the 100 best universities in the world in eight subjects and it is the top Spanish university in seven subjects in the 2020 ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS).

  • The UPC, leader in patent filing

    The UPC is the leading Spanish university in filing patent applications, according to data from the European Patent Office.

  • The UPC’s scientific activity in Architecture, Engineering and Computer Science stands out in Spain

    In the 2021 edition of the IUNE Observatory ranking, the UPC is ranked 1st among Spanish universities in scientific activity in five indicators for Architecture, Engineering and Computer Science. It is also the institution with the highest percentage of documents cited in the aggregated result of all the areas of knowledge analysed.

  • The Barcelona Urbanism Laboratory, an observatory of cities

    The UPC’s Barcelona Urbanism Laboratory (LUB) celebrates its 50th anniversary this academic year. The research centre provides a critical and constructive look at the evolution of the metropolis and has become a benchmark in urbanism and regional policy.

  • The UPC ranked the world’s 23rd in Climate Action and 48th in Affordable and Clean Energy in the THE Impact Rankings

    In the third edition of the THE Impact Rankings, which assess the impact of universities’ contributions to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UPC is ranked the world’s 23rd university in Climate Action and the world’s 48th in Affordable and Clean Energy. In the global ranking, the UPC remains in the 201-300 band.

  • 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.

  • Researcher Antonio González named Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery

    The professor Antonio González, a researcher from the UPC’s Department of Computer Architecture who teaches at the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB), has been named ACM Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his outstanding scientific contributions in information technologies.

  • The UPC has developed a payload for a United Arab Emirates satellite

    The NanoSat Lab at the UPC has developed one of the payloads for a United Arab Emirates satellite that is being developed by the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC), at the UAE University (UAEU) in Al Ain, to explore new GNSS reflectometry and RF monitoring techniques for the measurement of soil moisture and ionospheric scintillation.

  • EAR to the WILD, a groundbreaking smartphone application for the real-time monitoring of marine biodiversity

    On 8 June 2020, the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) launched EAR to the WILD, an innovative application that monitors ocean biodiversity from any mobile platform. The app listens to marine life from any smartphone, anywhere in the world. EAR to the WILD detects and warns of potential threats to the ocean by transmitting information in real time to dedicated cloud servers, where artificial intelligence techniques are used to continuously analyse the data received. The first vessel to take EAR to the WILD on board, the Swiss sailboat Mauritius from Fondation Pacifique, left Brittany, in France, for the Arctic on 9 June.

  • The Doctoral School welcomes new students and presents the special awards

    A total of 31 doctoral degree holders have received the 2020 special doctoral awards, with which the UPC’s Doctoral School recognises the best doctoral theses defended in the 2017–2018 academic year. The awards have been presented during the welcome event for new doctoral students, broadcasted live on the UPCtv channel.

  • 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.

  • A nanosatellite developed at the NanoSat Lab of the UPC has been placed in orbit with six experiments on board

    The launch, funded by the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), took place at 5:28 a.m. from the Sriharikota space base (India)

  • European grants for excellent research awarded to Ariadna Quattoni, from the Department of Computer Science, and Xavier Oliver, from the UPC-CIMNE

    The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Starting Grant to Ariadna Quattoni, a researcher at the Department of Computer Science, to develop a machine learning project, and a Proof of Concept grant to Xavier Oliver, a professor and researcher at the CIMNE, to launch a computational design project. In addition, researchers Dmitri Efetov, from the ICFO, and Loris Rizzello, from the IBEC, which are UPC-affiliated institutes, will receive Starting Grants to carry out cutting-edge research in the fields of Physical and Engineering Sciences and Life Sciences, respectively.

  • Semiconductors, at the heart of technology

    The semiconductor ecosystem in Catalonia, a sector that is in a phase of development, comprises around a hundred companies and research entities and some 4,400 professionals. Companies such as Cisco, Monolithic Power Systems (MPS) and Intel have chosen Barcelona as the location for their microchip design centres, and another twenty or so foreign investment projects are expected to follow in the next few years.

  • Technological cooperation at the UPC to fight COVID-19

    Low-cost ventilators, ICT technology to manage the spread of the pandemic, a campaign to collect tablets and mobile phones for isolated patients in hospitals... The UPC is providing 145,000 euros in funding to support 20 local- and international-scale cooperation projects to tackle the COVID-19 health emergency.

  • 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 superplasticizers interact in cement pastes using synchrotron light. These results pave the way for improving the design of new superplasticizers with enhanced tolerance to the clays contained in the sand used for concrete production.

  • Researchers manage to perform biomechanical simulations up to 20 times faster

    A team of researchers from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Stanford University (United States) and the UPC have improved the efficiency of biomechanical simulation software systems to perform simulations up to 20 times faster. The results of this research have been published in the journal ‘PlosOne’.

  • Two UPC nanosatellites in orbit to study polar regions and provide Earth observation images by using artificial intelligence

    Two small satellites created at the UPC’s Nanosat Lab have travelled to space from Kourou, French Guiana, on 2 September (at 3.51 a.m. on 3 September Spanish time) to carry out the FSSCat mission, which received the ESA Sentinel Small Satellite (S^3) Challenge award in 2017. The main objective of the mission is to monitor polar ice and soil moisture while testing intersatellite communication systems in order to create a future network of federated satellites. The ɸ-sat-1 technology demonstrator is also on board, it is ESA’s first artificial intelligence in space and it will filter out images of the Earth that are not suitable for use because of cloud cover.

  • Using AI to decodeing the mechanisms that enable plants to adapt to climate change

    An international research team led by the UPC has used advanced machine learning techniques to identify, for the first time, the key genes that enable plants to respond simultaneously to multiple forms of environmental stress. The study, published in Nature Communications, presents a new approach to analysing multifactorial stress at the genomic scale and paves the way for designing crops that are more resilient to climate change.

  • 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).

  • Microgravity does not affect frozen sperm according to a study by Dexeus Mujer in collaboration with the UPC

    A study conducted by Dexeus Mujer in collaboration with the UPC reveals that gravity conditions outside the Earth do not affect frozen human sperm. The results of this study were reported in late June at the 35th Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology held in Vienna.

  • 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.

  • LIVE_FOR, a European project for judicial cooperation on cybercrime

    The UPC’s Network Security Emergency Coordination Unit (esCERT-UPC) will become an information centre for police, prosecutors and judges in Western Europe, advising them on the application of European Investigation Orders in the fight against cross-border cybercrime and cyberterrorism. The initiative is part of the European LIVE_FOR project, funded by the European Union’s Directorate-General for Justice, which wants to facilitate the application of a new European directive on judicial cooperation in tackling crimes of this kind.

  • Five young Marie Curie researchers will join the UPC with European funding

    Four new UPC projects were selected in the latest Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) call for Innovative Training Networks, and will allow five young researchers to be contracted for a period of three years. The aims of these projects are to train a new generation of researchers specialised in new robotic surgical techniques, in the prediction of extreme meteorological phenomena, in the adaptation of optical fibre communications to deal with increasing data traffic, and in the development of bimetallic catalysts.