Strategic Managing Unit
The Strategic Managing Unit, responsible for the implementation of the funding obtained by the Institute, was created in 2016 to reinforce the strategic projects, support all the initiatives related to the Severo Ochoa FUNMAT governance and initiatives, coordinate with the Managing Director the expenditures control and justification, promote the achievement of strategic projects complementing the FUNMAT actions and provide support to researchers in preparing, submitting and reporting new projects and grants. In close collaboration with ICMAB’s governing bodies and the other available Units, it promotes a continuous development strategy to position ICMAB as one of the leading European Research Centers in Materials Science.
Among its main objectives, the Unit is responsible for the constant search for new funding opportunities focusing on the strategic and innovation objectives of our Severo Ochoa FUNFUTURE project with the aim of enhancing ICMAB's scientific excellence, with an open-minded approach to detect new opportunities for our researchers. In 2020 the Unit was formed by Montse Salas, Laura Cabana, and Christopher Albornoz.
Research Projects
COFUND MSCA DOC-FAM
The Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) coordinates the first MSCA COFUND programme awarded to CSIC. The doctoral fellowship programme DOC-FAM (DOCtoral training programme in Functional Advanced Materials) is currently allowing the mobility of 22 Early Stage Researchers in the field of functional advanced materials, 9 of them at the ICMAB. The first call of the project was on October 2017, and the first fellows were incorporated during the second semester of 2018. The second call was on September 2018, and the fellows entered the training phase during 2019.
The other participants in DOC-FAM programme are the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) and the ALBA Synchrotron. The duration of the programme is 5 years and involves a budget of 3,453,120 €. Half of this budget is supported by the 1,726,560€ EC grant, while the other half will be cofunded by the project participants. At the ICMAB, the project is cofunded by the Severo Ochoa project.
NFFA Europe
ICMAB is one of the host institutions of the NFFA-Europe (Nanofoundries for fine analysis) project for the synthesis and characterization at the nanoscale across Europe, which started in 2015 and will finish in March 2021, and will continue with the NFFA-Europe project as NFFA-Europe Pilot (NEP) until 2025.
During 2020, ICMAB has participated in the following way: we have received 2 users in our facilities. However, all the User Access had to be transformed into Remote Access due to COVID-19 restrictions. This was a challenge for the Institute, who had to change the methodology of participation of the user in the experiment. Constant communication with user through e-mail, videoconference and continuous data exchange have been crucial to obtain the same results as if the user was in our installations. We have had users from the following institutions and countries: Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) and Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Russia). The users were able to perform experiments at the SQUID in the Low Temperatures and Magnetometry Lab, with Bernat Bozzo, and Magnetic characterization with Ignasi Fina.
