The future of European science is taking shape in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The Generalitat and the central government have sealed an agreement that will allocate 926 million euros until 2038 to the Alba Synchrotron, with a clear objective: to launch Alba II in 2032, a fourth-generation particle accelerator that aims to lead scientific and industrial research at a European level.
The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the Minister of Science, Diana Morant, were in charge of sealing the investment agreement, which will not only consolidate the synchrotron's position as one of the most advanced in Europe, but will also project it towards the technology of the future.
The agreement updates the collaboration agreement that has sustained the synchrotron consortium for years —the Consortium for the Construction, Equipment and Exploitation of the Synchrotron Light Laboratory, known by its acronym CELLS—. In this new stage, the Generalitat will contribute 465 million, while the Ministry will inject another 461, coming from both its own budgets and European funds.
With these resources, the current accelerator will be renewed, new beamlines will be opened and, above all, Alba II will be built, the great scientific bet that will allow researchers to observe matter with unprecedented precision and advance in fields as diverse as biomedicine, energy, nanotechnology and materials physics.
From antibiotics to climate change
In fact, the range of sectors that will be able to use the power of Alba II is so wide that it goes from health to climate change. In this regard, Morant stressed that the new accelerator will be key to investigating antibiotic resistance, promoting new treatments against brain cancer or developing tools to combat the climate emergency: "We want to jointly finance a great technological leap that will keep Alba at the international forefront for at least two more decades." And she went further:has described the investment as "one of the biggest scientific bets in the country's history."Since its launch in 2010, the synchrotron has been featured in 3,800 scientific publications ---40% of them led by SMEs---. The financial reinforcement foresees increasing the staff by 25% in the next six years, with projects such as the state-of-the-art clean room InnoFab, which will develop advanced semiconductors with alternatives to silicon products.
For his part, Illa has defended public leadership in projects of this magnitude and has claimed that the investment will place Catalonia "among the 50 most innovative regions in Europe". According to the president, every euro invested will have a social return of 1.5 euros, in the form of business competitiveness, technological solutions, and attraction of international talent.
"Betting on innovation is promoting prosperity," he declared, and agreed to emphasize that the frontier science that will be developed in Cerdanyola will impact daily life, from the development of new drugs to the creation of more sustainable materials.
The director of the Synchrotron, Caterina Biscari, has not hidden her enthusiasm for the new investment: "With Alba II we will have the necessary instruments to build a brighter future. We promise to continue meeting the expectations of the scientific community."
Thus, the agreement places the Synchrotron at the center of the international scientific map, at a time when technological autonomy and innovation capacity set the pace: Europe accelerates, and it also does so from Cerdanyola.
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