CENTER OF EXCELLENCE

Severo Ochoa Project

2020 has been the first year of our second recently awarded Severo Ochoa "Center of Excellence" Project, after our first Severo Ochoa period (2016-2019).

The project “Advanced Functional Materials for a Better Future” (FUNFUTRE) will enable us to continue in the forefront of materials research in Spain and in the world. With our ambitious programme, we tackle three of the main social grand challenges of the 21st Century, which are our three main application areas:

  • CLEAN AND SECURE ENERGY
  • SUSTAINABLE AND LOW COST ELECTRONICS
  • SMART NANOMEDICINE

And, at the same time, it allows us to continue with our training and recruiting programmes, our exploitation and communications strategic plans, and to continue collaborating with our international and national colleagues to create a better future. 

Severo Ochoa 2020-2023

The new Severo Ochoa will enable ICMAB to increase its international competitiveness and international visibility. The consolidation of the Communication and Outreach, Knowledge Transfer and Strategic Managing Units, started with the first Severo Ochoa label, will be instrumental to that respect. Belonging to the SOMMa alliance will promote more synergies with other centres, also enhancing the impact and visibility of our activities.

With this Severo Ochoa project, we continue our competitive calls to develop high-risk interdisciplinary internal projects (Frontier Interdisciplinary Projects), which result in new and proof-of-concept topics. which helps keeping our research at the forefront of materials science. The publications and patents that emerge from this initiative are a seed for future larger projects to consolidate cross-cutting research.

We will continue to reinforce our scientific platforms and to develop talent attraction programs at all levels (Postdoc, PhD, Master, Undergraduate projects, etc.) and training programmes for our young researchers. With this new Severo Ochoa, we expect to attract both highly talented researchers and committed support research staff from all over the world to our Institute.

The ICMAB new 2020-2023 Strategic Plan in the field of advanced functional materials for a better future will generate multiple academic and industrial collaborations and will allow our research to be more international and competitive. In addition, we will be able to train a good number of competitive professionals that will be inserted in the Spanish R+D+i system.

Overall, we expect this to be a fruitful adventure and to consolidate our Institue, while also opening new opportunities.

Application areas

CLEAN AND SECURE ENERGY

The Energy sector is facing a new worldwide paradigm with 20 % renewables and 20 % decrease of greenhouse emission for 2020. This requires new ways of producing, storing, transporting and stabilizing electricity. The ICMAB undertakes this challenge reinforcing our expertise in smart functional materials research and strategically developing cost-effective upscalable technologies, from materials choice all along the value chain process to proof-of-concept devices. Our roadmap promotes greener and cost-effective technologies strengthening materials growth from chemical methods and highlighting additive manufacturing technologies for large area materials at high performance/low cost.

SMART AND SUSTAINABLE ELECTRONICS

Current needs in big-data handling are demanding new solutions for the dramatic energy consumption of current computing and data storage devices. Power dissipation and miniaturization are fundamental challenges for nanoelectronic circuits. We envisage sustainable and energy-efficiency approaches to electronics by working along two fronts: exploiting dissipation-less storage and information control by electric fields and involving spin-only currents, rather than charge transport. The use of organic materials/molecules in devices will also provide important guidance towards a new-generation of memories. Great perspectives are expected for the development of devices exploiting the charge as well as the spin of the molecules.

SMART NANOMEDICINE

Academia and the innovative industry have directed its interests towards nanomedicine, whose technological breakthrough potentiality is widely acknowledged. It is envisaged that the unique properties of nanomaterials will make a strong impact contributing to solve some of the challenges of Health and Societal Wellbeing. FUNMAT will contribution to Nanomedecine, through improvement of drugs and medicines making them more selective, less toxic, and more efficient. It will also contribute to the advance of medical diagnosis by developing new contrast agents for medical imaging techniques. Further, the use of advanced materials and nanotechnology concepts in synergy with molecular biology will allow the generation of new tools for tissue engineering meaning a giant step for regenerative medicine.

Coordination
Anna May-Masnou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Redaction
Anna May-Masnou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Web & Graphic Editor
José Antonio Gómez  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Webmasters
José Antonio Gómez This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Albert Moreno     This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ICMAB