Barcelona Science Park, a strategic hub for public R&D&i of excellence

2021 was a year full of challenges and milestones achieved for public research groups and institutes working at the Barcelona Science Park. They are all part of a highly dynamic, cutting-edge scientific community that is constantly growing and includes two Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence: the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona); the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC), with a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence; and the National Centre for Genomic Analysis (CNAG-CRG), which is on the Spanish map of Unique Science and Technology Infrastructures (ICTS).   

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences technology unit (ICCUB-Tech), the VHIR Rheumatology Research Group (GRR) and five cutting-edge laboratories and groups from the University of Barcelona are also part of this public R&D+i ecosystem, joined recently by the IDIBAPS-Hospital Clinic Barcelona Aids and HIV Infection group, which moved into the Park in 2022.  

All the activity generated by these centres consolidates the PCB as one of the most powerful spaces in the country in the field of health research and places it as a strategic hub for public R&D&i of excellence. 

In terms of attracting funding, the public research groups, centres and institutes at the Park mobilised nearly €66 million in public (€56.4 million) and private (€9.5 million) funds, which allowed them to work proactively to drive valorisation and exploitation of their research results to bring innovation to the market and contribute to the country’s economic growth and quality of life in society. 

The 17 applications for new patents and extensions, 6 technology transfer deals, over a thousand collaboration agreements with public and private organisations, and 2 spin-offs are all indicators of this successful dynamic. 

In 2021, they also remained at the cutting-edge of frontier research, thanks to their ability to attract and retain innovative talent, develop powerful technology tools, and use disruptive approaches to advance scientific knowledge -reflected in the over 600 papers published in scientific international journals- which they aim to use to address the great challenges of global health and science.  
 

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