Barcelona signs the establishment of a subsidiary of one of the world's most important applied research centers.

BarcelonaBarcelona has now definitively agreed to establish a subsidiary of the German Fraunhofer Institute, one of the world's leading applied research centers. This is the first establishment of that organization to open in Spain. The President of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Salvador Illa, will lead the signing ceremony of the institutional protocol for the launch of the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Theragnosis (Fraunhofer-CAT) this Friday, along with the Minister of Science, Diana Morant, and the Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, as well as the President of Fraunhofer.

The agreement contains contributions from the three administrations. The Generalitat (Catalan Government) plans to contribute approximately €14 million; the City Council, €8 million; and the Ministry of Science, €4.5 million. The contributions will be spread over time. The new center, located in the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) of the University of Barcelona (UB), has the collaboration of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). It is expected that around 100 jobs will be created, along with a return on public investment in services of 10 euros for every one invested after seven years, according to estimates made by the City Council a few months ago.

This event launches the two-year-old agreement aimed at consolidating Catalonia as a scientific hub in the fields of biomedicine and bioengineering with reach throughout southern Europe. The Spanish government frames this initiative as part of its commitment to science and innovation.

Technology transfer

Fraunhofer-CAT will accelerate the transfer of scientific results into applications and solutions for society, especially in the fields of healthcare and advanced therapies, and will promote applied bioengineering projects in international collaboration. Prior to launching the initiative, Fraunhofer Spain was established as a foundation. This initiative will also boost the internationalization of IBEC and, through this organization, will connect the Catalan research ecosystem with the international one.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is a German public institution comprised of 74 applied research institutes, whose goal is to transfer research results into products and services useful to society. It currently has 26,600 employees, 10,300 of whom are scientific staff. Innovations such as the MP3 format emerged from this center. The main areas of knowledge it focuses on are health and the environment, safety and security, communication and knowledge, mobility and transportation, energy and resources, and production and service delivery.

The Generalitat (Catalan Government) highlights that some of the benefits of establishing Fraunhofer's headquarters in Barcelona include an increased ability to connect academic and industrial research sectors and an acceleration of knowledge transfer. This also interconnects Catalan, Spanish, and German research. In fact, one of the outstanding issues for improving the economy's productivity is technology transfer, according to a study by the Productivity and Innovation Initiative (IPI), promoted by the Círculo de Economía (Economy Circle) and coordinated by Professor Xavier Vives. This center represents a step in that path to improving innovation.