Europe chooses Barcelona to investigate

Catalonia ranks as the fifth European region in attracting funds from the European Research Council (ERC), one of the main sources of funding for research at an international level. The excellent university level in Barcelona and its metropolitan area allows it to be on par with countries like Finland, Norway, or Belgium, according to a study by the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP). In the different calls promoted by the ERC ---Starting Grants, Consolidated Grants, Advanced Grants, and Proof of Concept---, Catalan public universities obtained a total of 32 grants in 2018.

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This year, a total of ten scientists conducting research in Catalonia have just received the latest round of consolidation grants for mid-career researchers ---22 have been awarded nationwide---. The funding, up to two million euros per grant, with an additional one million euros, is offered for a period of about five years and is mainly intended for the salaries of researchers and other members of the research teams. To apply for this call, researchers must have between seven and twelve years of postdoctoral experience, and the research must be carried out in public or private research organizations, on issues related to social sciences, engineering, or biomedicine.

Núria Montserrat (IBEC), Mar Reguant (Barcelona GSE), Manuel Irimia (CRG), and Maria Carolina Florian (IDIBELL) are four of these ten researchers, and all of them agree that these grants truly allow you to change your life.

"It's a qualitative leap"

Genetic researcher Manuel Irimia is dedicated to studying microexons, very small genetic elements that can greatly vary the functions of proteins. To understand it, the scientist asks to imagine a gene as if it were a sentence: the words would be these genetic elements, which must be put together to give it meaning, and there are some, like no, that can greatly vary its meaning, despite being very small. Knowing these microexons should help him see what impact they have on brain and neuron development, and if they are related to autism.

Now, the grant has to help him expand his studies to other organs, such as the pancreas or the retina. "It's a qualitative leap to understand these microexons," he explains. After his ERC Starting Grant, which helped him set up his team, the new grant will allow him to expand his lines of research, but, above all, to keep the researchers who work with him. "Everyone was waiting to see if I got it or not to know if on January 1st they had to pack their bags or not. It's that dramatic," he points out. For this reason, he emphasizes that these grants have a great impact on research in Barcelona, both practically and scientifically.

Born in A Coruña, Irimia studied Biology in Madrid. After living in Copenhagen, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada, he came to the Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG) in Barcelona, a city where he had already been developing his thesis at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). "By far, Barcelona is the most attractive city in the scientific field in Spain," he explains. According to him, it is the one with the most developed international component, recruiting talent from many countries, and its lifestyle attracts many researchers. "All this makes it a good place," he emphasizes, although he regrets that the support that science receives in Catalonia and Spain cannot be compared with that of other European countries. "In Barcelona, if a lot were invested, it could be the reference in Southern Europe, for sure. It has the foundations," he explains.

"By far, Barcelona is the most attractive city in the scientific field in Spain," he explains, although he regrets that research does not receive the same support as in other European countries.

With a degree in Economics from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mar Reguant lives in the United States, working as a professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. Despite everything, this year has been one of the good ones for her. Since May, she has been part of a team of advisors to Emmanuel Macron's government on climate change, alongside Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Jean Tirole. "From this, I became somewhat famous and a lot of work has come my way, which is making me return to Barcelona," she explains. And, now, with the help of the European Research Council, it seems that the return home is closer.

Reguant studies energy markets and the transition they are undergoing, devising economic policies to perfect them. She is dedicated to analyzing the information generated in these markets, to see how the energy transition is impacting their operation and to study their design, with the aim of finding ways to better integrate renewable energies and produce them more cheaply.

The ERC grant will allow her to create models that analyze this infinity of data and draw conclusions, using new tools such as machine learning. "Basically, they are statistical techniques that are now given cooler names," she clarifies.

In fact, for Reguant, in addition to the possibility of returning to Barcelona, this funding will allow her to make "a very big leap" and double her team at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (Barcelona GSE), reaching six or seven researchers. "I am very excited because with this scholarship I will be able to form a much larger team and hire people who do not necessarily come from the field of economics or energy, but who come more from the field of machine learning and together see what we can do," she explains.

Attracting a lot of talent

The ICREA research professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) Núria Montserrat highlights that the grants provided by the ERC allow for a type of risky research, which requires a large amount of resources because it addresses unanswered questions and needs to develop technologies to approach them. "These are high risk, high gain questions because the benefits you can obtain are very good," she remarks.

For Montserrat, the European Research Council grants help attract a lot of talent, thanks to their prestige, both in Europe and the rest of the world. "They allow you to get a good start," she argues. In addition, they serve to find other funding avenues, through consortia and collaboration with other researchers who receive this support in Europe: "They open many doors for you."

A biologist by training, with stays in European and American laboratories, Montserrat studies kidney diseases through human mini-kidneys generated with stem cells. With the support of the ERC, she will investigate how metabolism and the physical environment impact the embryonic development of kidneys and kidney diseases. To do this, she hopes to expand her team to 15 or 20 people, after having worked on these micro-kidneys with about five researchers with the first grant she received in 2014 from the ERC —a Starting Grant—.

Montserrat studies kidney ailments through human mini-kidneys generated with stem cells

Dr. Maria Carolina Florian, leader of the Stem Cell Aging group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the Regenerative Medicine Program of Catalonia, chose Barcelona to continue her research because she saw that there was "an idea, a program for the future," unlike what she was finding elsewhere. She was evaluating other destinations but ended up opting for the Catalan capital.

Florian, who is Italian, arrived in Barcelona two years ago, where she feels very well received. She likes the culture, the food, the sea... "It's a great city," she values. Professionally, the choice of the city and the help of the ERC will allow her to focus her studies on bone marrow rejuvenation, which can serve to improve the survival and quality of life of elderly patients undergoing chemotherapy. "Without a doubt, I have the possibility to advance my research," Florian indicates, by hiring more staff and exploring this new line of research.