Projects News

On the occasion of the "Marató de TV3: Minories que fan una Majoria", which is this year devoted to rare diseases, we would like to show you a project in which we participate and which tackles a rare disease: the SMART-4-FABRY project. One of the main objectives of the project is to use nanotechnology to increase the efficiency of the current treatment for the Fabry disease, based on the GLA enzyme. Nora Ventosa and her team, from CIBER-BBN and NANOMOL group at ICMAB-CSIC, coordinate the project, in which fourteen partners from different countries participate.

The Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC), together with many research centers and universities, including the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), have initiated an art project that will represent in a different way thw world of nanotechnology: NANOCAEDRE. Susagna Ricart, from the ICMAB, participates in this project with her expertise in the superconducting phenomena. The presentation of the project will take place at the Basilica Sants Màrtirs Just i Pastor (Barcelona), on Tuesday, 10 December, at 7 pm.

• The second call of this program will allow 12 predoctoral researchers to start their PhD at the ICMAB-CSIC, the ICN2, the IMB-CNM-CSIC, the IREC and the ALBA Synchrotron
• In total the DOC-FAM program will enable 22 early stage researchers to conduct their PhD in the field of "Advanced Functional Materials" in these outstanding research institutions
• The DOC-FAM program, coordinated by the ICMAB, is the first MSCA COFUND coordinated by a CSIC center

The Plant Nanohealing Technology, jointly developed by CRAG and ICMAB-CSIC researchers, is currently being tested by the company Forestal Catalana.

"SENSORAÏM: Autonomous Distributed Sensor Networks for a Smart Viticulture" is the new project led by Mariano Campoy-Quiles from the NANOPTO group at the ICMAB funded by FEDER (Fons Europeu de Desenvolupament Regional), Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR) and Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya, within the modality "PRODUCTE" grants (2018 PROD 00191), aimed at obtaining prototypes of the research results generated by research groups in Catalunya. These projects are excellent to reinforce the technology transfer of the Catalan research centers. 

The project "Synthetic nanoparticles as an innovative treatment in sepsis (SPRINT-4-SEPSIS)" will be funded by the Ramón Areces Foundation within the framework of the XIX National Contest of Life and Material Sciences Research Grants. Anna Roig will be part of the project. 

CARBAT, the FET-Open European project on Calcium Rechargeable Battery Technology, coordinated by M. Rosa Palacín at ICMAB, has a new video that explains their project! If you want to know more, check it out here!

Within the MOTHER project (Molecule-based materials and supramolecular organizations for therapy, diagnosis and tissue engineering), the NANOMOL group from ICMAB collaborates with the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR), on the developement of a new nanomedicine for the treatment of high risk neuroblastoma, one of the most typical childhood cancers. Now, researchers from VHIR have identified new microRNAs that reduce the progression of this type of cancer.

The SusPlast platform was officially launched on March 2019. The "Interdisciplinary Platform for Sustainable Plastics towards a Circular Economy" platform counts with the participation of 15 research groups from CSIC centers. From the ICMAB, from the Supercritical Fluids and Functional Materials group (SFFM) participates in the platform.

Each year on 4 February, World Cancer Day empowers all the world to show support, raise their voices, take personal action and press the governments to do more. We would like to show you our projects on cancer research. Take a look at our projects!

The E-MAGIC (European Magnesium Interactive Battery Community) research project is a European H2020 FET-PROACTIVE recently funded with 6.5 million euros. Its aim is to develop new magnesium-based batteries, more powerful, cheaper and safer than lithium-ion ones. The project could pave the way for the establishment of a competitive battery cell production landscape in Europe.

• The device is composed of cellulose produced in the laboratory by bacteria, with small amounts of carbon nanotubes, resulting very sustainable
• The device could be used to generate electricity in wearables, in medical and sports applications, and as intelligent thermal insulator

With the participation of 9 academic institutions and 2 industrial organisations in 6 countries, the SEPOMO European H2020 MSCA-ITN network is training 15 early-stage researchers during a 3-year period in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, Materials Science and Engineering for efficient photovoltaic devices based on organic molecules. Two of these fellows are supervised by ICMAB researchers: Francesco Silvestri, supervised by Esther Barrena, and Rana Adel Abdelaleim Mohammed, who is doing her research at Eurecat, co-supervised by Mariano Campoy-Quiles. 

Resarchers from the NANOMOL group at the ICMAB-CSIC and from CIBER-BBN, led by Dr. Imma Ratera, have been awarded with a project from Fundació La Marató de TV3 for the coordinated-project about prevention of infections related with vascular catheters: "Prevenció d’infeccions relacionades amb els CATèters vasculars mitjançant la FUNcionalització de catèters impregnats d'hidrogels activables tèrmicament amb  antimicrobians d’ampli espectre (FUNCATH)".

The paper Direct and converse piezoelectric responses at the nanoscale from epitaxial BiFeO₃ thin films grown by polymer assisted deposition published this October in the Nanoscale journal, has received funding from the EU-H2020 research and innovation programme, having benefitted from the access provided by the ICMAB-CSIC in Barcelona, within the framework of the NFFA-Europe Transnational Access Activity. 

Watch here the video of the ULTRASUPERTAPE project, the ERC Advanced Grant project awarded to Teresa Puig, explained here in plain words for everyone to understand! 

Dr. Lourdes Fàbrega, from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), leads the development in Spain of a special type of sensors that can detect very small changes in temperature and that will be used in the forthcoming European space missions.

These sensors are extremely sensitive and miniaturized microcalorimeters, like small thermometers, that can detect even the energy of one single photon.

This year the ICMAB counted with 7 out of the 34 fellowships for Master students that the CSIC distributed among the five Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence of the CSIC (Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (ICMAT), Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB), Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), Instituto de Neurociencias (IN) and Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB); and the Structural Biology Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu. The 7 granted students will do their Master Thesis Project with one of our researchers during 5 months, and will receive 5,000 €. 

Continuing the Strategic Vision for the Severo Ochoa programme FUNMAT ("Smart FUNctional MATerials for social grand challenges"), the ICMAB opened the call for the third edition of the Frontier Interdisciplinary Projects (FIP) earlier this year 2018. Out of all the proposals submitted, 9 projects in different fields have been granted. 

• The first call for this program has been closed offering 10 predoctoral grants: 5 of them at the ICMAB-CSIC, 2 at the IREC and 3 at the ALBA Synchrotron
• The DOC-FAM program is the first MSCA COFUND coordinated by a center of the CSIC, the ICMAB
• The next call for the program will offer 12 fellowships to do the PhD in these centers and also at ICN2 and IMB-CNM-CSIC

The Comfuturo program (“Un Compromiso público privado con la ciencia y el Futuro”) has granted the research project "NANOingeniería de ÓXIdos para el mayor aprovechamiento de la energía SOLar usando rutas no convencionales (NANOXISOL)" (Oxides nanoengineering for improvement of photovoltaic efficiency using non-conventional routes) presented by Ignasi Fina in this second edition.

On April 5, 2018, the first CARBAT project meeting was celebrated. The meeting was held at the CARBAT coordinator's research institute, Prof. M. Rosa Palacín, the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) in Bellaterra. CARBAT is a FET Open research and innovation action in the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, funded over the H2020-FETOPEN-2016-2017 call, which started on October 2017. 

A new European-funded project that started in February 2018 is enabling greater cooperation between SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and research centres in the Spain-France border regions. Coordinated by the Basque company BihurCrystal, the ICMAB researcher Dr. Xavier Torrelles is contibuting to the project. Here we present the official press release.

The week 12-18 March 2018 is the Brain Awareness Week (BAW), a global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. Every March, BAW unites the efforts of partner organizations worldwide in a celebration of the brain for people of all ages.

Bacterial cellulose biopolymer
Wounds in plants can be caused by several agents like weather events (hail, wind…), predators (herbivores, insects) or humans (pruning, grafting), among others. 

This post features one of the articles published at CORDIS about the EUROTAPES project, which main goal is to develop superconducting tapes to improve energy efficiency in Europe. The SUMAN group, here at ICMAB, has actively participated in this European project, in a consortium that consists of 20 partners from 8 member states - 6 universities, 6 institutes, 1 technological center and 8 industrial companies. 

ICMAB is one of the host institutions of the NFFA-Europe project for the synthesis and characterisation at the nanoscale across Europe, which started in 2015 and will last until the end of 2018. 

The second internal call of the Frontier Interdisciplinary Projects (FIP) within the FUNMAT Severo Ochoa programme has been resolved: 8 projects have been granted, out of the 18 proposals submitted in the FIP Call 2017.

The Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Almirall, and the Leitat Technology Center, will develop two types of nanocapsules with active principles for the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases such as acne and psoriasis.

The ICMAB spin-off Oxolutia and BSH Spain will collaborate to improve the performance of materials in the R & D phase.

This week, Rosa Palacín, Roberta Verrelli and Enrique Irisarri, from the Solid State Chemistry group, participate in the H2020 NAIADES Project Meeting & Summer School on "Sodium-ion Batteries: Fundamentals & Applications”, which takes place at Charlmers University, in Gothenburg.

• The doctoral fellowship programme DOC-FAM will allow the mobility of 22 PhD students in the field of functional advanced materials.
• ICMAB-CSIC, IMB-CNM-CSIC, ICN2, IREC and ALBA Synchrotron will host these fellows within a period of 5 years.
• The total budget of the programme is 3.453.120€, of which 50% will be covered by the EC grant..

A sensor platform to detect heavy metals has been developed within the COMMON SENSE project and presented during its final event, last Friday 27th January. The partners that participated in the development of this sensor platform are Dublin City University (DCU), DropSens, National Center of Microelectronics (CNM-IMB) (CSIC), and the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites Group (NN) at ICMAB (CSIC).