Nature published last Thursday an article on how Catalonia has succeed keeping a high research level getting over budget cuts of 39%. The article, titled “Staying a steady course through the storm“, explains the keys for this success.
Arcadi Navarro, Secretary for Universities and Research, describes the secret for this success: “The crucial thing that guaranteed resilience was to focus policies on people, not on projects.”. Catalonia focused on attracting top researchers with European competitive salaries through an institution devoted to this goal: ICREA. The institute contracts top researcher making them professors for life with internationally competitive salaries.
After national budget decreased dramatically the eye was set on Europe and International grants. Between 2007 and 2015 Catalonia obtained 180 European Research Council (ERC) grants, more than Spain’s other 16 regions combined, and is fourth for ERC projects.
The article does a special mention to Barcelona Supercomputing Center describing its research and supercomputing facilities, and to Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (CASE) department as devoted to industry collaboration. BSC holds 6 ERC grants and 6 ICREA Professors contributing to keep top level research in Catalonia. The BSC Fusion group is lead by Dr Mervi Mantsinen, ICREA Professor since November 2013. She set up the research group in 2013, obtaining highly competitive grants and international contracts for the group and being able to double the staff in the last year to a total of 8 members.
The full article can be found here.