Núria Montserrat (Barcelona, 1978) was dedicated to generating micro-kidneys in a laboratory at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) until Salvador Illa called her to join the Government as Minister of Research and Universities. An ICREA research professor, she studied and earned her doctorate in Biology at the University of Barcelona (UB), with stays in Switzerland and France. She is the most independent profile in the Catalan executive, with an extensive career in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
She has left the white coat, but has not lost the desire to learn and, at any moment, pulls out a pen to jot down a new idea. She knows the sector she now represents very well and feels the weight of responsibility: there is a lot of work to do and many people to listen to in an increasingly uncertain world. In response, the socialist executive has committed to allocating 2 billion euros over the next five years to strengthen the knowledge ecosystem. This week, it has given the green light to one of the main projects, InnoFab, a center that will develop advanced semiconductors with products alternative to silicon. It will be very close to the Alba Synchrotron, located in Cerdanyola del Vallès, immersed in an expansion process to conduct more experiments. With an investment of 400 million euros, the forecast is that construction of this new infrastructure will begin in the first quarter of 2026, with everything expected to be completed by the end of 2027.
--- How should we imagine this new infrastructure?
--- It will have a 2,000 square meter clean room to manufacture chips in small series. Prototypes can be made that will have the seal to be commercialized. This will help accelerate the sector a lot. It is a very good opportunity for people to start scaling products, manufacturing chips, and working together. InnoFab is strategically located next to the Alba Synchrotron, which acts as the first level. That is, first we need to understand a material and know how it behaves. We are lucky in Catalonia to have a synchrotron; if we were in Albacete, we would have to send the material here. Therefore, we are going to build a clean room to develop semiconductors that will be right next to the synchrotron, it will also be next to other nearby centers, such as the National Microelectronics Center (IMB-CNM) of the CSIC, which works in a more academic field. We don't want InnoFab to be something isolated, it has to collaborate with its environment. This is something that researchers know how to do very well: work in a network. We also hope to weave many synergies with the spin-offs of the BSC and the ICFO.
--- Why do we have to start producing these chips?
--- We are not competitive enough in the field of semiconductors. Why? We are very powerful in terms of knowledge, publications, and generating spin-offs, but we do not have the capacity to be autonomous in the manufacturing process. We want to bet on projects that help us to be more independent, but we cannot be totally disconnected from the world, but rather start to gain strategic autonomy in those areas where we accumulate a lot of knowledge. We have to help even more so that Catalonia can stand out and start making products that are commercial and can be sold.
--- How is this done?
--- At InnoFab, work will be carried out in a pre-industrial setting, but this will only be possible if there is an academic contribution. Research centers, such as universities, are spaces of applied knowledge: moving from theory to testing. This empirical demonstration can be converted into a patent and generate a spin-off. When this happens, you have to start scaling up and making larger productions, and you cannot do that in an academic room. In my previous life at IBEC, we had a microfabrication room. We could do relatively small productions. If suddenly they asked me to produce 1,000 units, I couldn't do it. You need an infrastructure. That's why it's great that researchers can have access to such a space. They don't have to send their prototype to Taiwan. No, we do it here, in Cerdanyola del Vallès. We have people who are doing wonderful things, but, when it reaches certain phases of the production chain, they have to outsource them. And it's okay if you have to outsource it, but, of course, we are losing a lot of investment and, above all, it entails a very high personal cost. Because people have invested a lot of time. What we want is for Catalonia to prosper economically and to do so with the knowledge generated at home.
--- What else needs to be done?
--- We have been very good in the field of knowledge, structuring it in research centers and infrastructures, and we have had a mature system for more than 20 years. But we have worked with formulas that we have to readjust. Until now, there have been relay races. First you do research, then you try to do translation, you register a patent and, finally, you release the product. We want to find new ways to incentivize it. Innovation will not happen by itself. It is very difficult for a researcher to say, "I want to set up a company," because we don't know how to do it. How can we promote it? We have to generate opportunities for this to happen. One of them is to bring companies closer to knowledge and open the doors to them. From the department, we can promote this with calls for knowledge transfer and by strengthening infrastructures and creating new ones from scratch.
--- Where else do companies need to get closer to knowledge?
--- The BSC's artificial intelligence factory, which will open its technology to SMEs. There, large numerical simulations can be done. The BSC already has relationships with companies like Vueling and Renfe. More and more, large companies approach it and ask for help. But there are also many small companies that need it. It's a win-win for the supercomputer; they also learn when they come into contact with SMEs. It's a two-way relationship: the company approaches them and asks for a solution and, for their part, the researcher who was thinking about how to apply an algorithm in one process realizes that they can apply it in another. It's great that we are starting to open the doors to knowledge and do it both ways. It's a discourse that, sometimes, has risks because it seems like we are saying that research belongs to companies. Behind those companies there are people working. People who have risked a lot. The employers' association Pimec encompasses 150,000 companies with one, two, three, four workers. We are talking about these companies, about people who one day discovered something and decided to take it somewhere. We also have to help them.
--- And what do companies have to do?
--- All investment cannot be public. The private sector also has to believe in the transfer of knowledge. These are very risky projects: it is estimated that 30% fail. It is very easy to bet on an initiative that is about to commercialize an iPhone; the issue is to invest when it is not yet an iPhone. This is where we still don't have the maturity of other countries, where companies invest more. What needs to be done? We have to generate trust. Is there a lack of investment? Yes, but we also have to generate these spaces of trust. And we cannot fail.
--- More pending subjects.
--- We often talk about talent retention, but what we also want is for talent to be able to circulate and do so naturally between the public and private sectors. This doesn't happen. Everything is very stagnant. How can we do it? By incentivizing. Why is it always scientific talent that has to go abroad? Perhaps it's not necessary. An excellent doctorate can be done in a research center here, but specialized training in a company, and then return to the university. For a long time, private companies have been seen as a harmful interlocutor, but young people want something else. We have to adapt to what they need.
--- How?
--- Talent must be able to reach university. We know that only 11% of university students are from a low social class. But, if you look at medical students, 51% are from an upper-middle social class. This says a lot. The university has lost its role as a social elevator. This worries us. Not everyone has to go to university, but whoever wants to, must be able to. It is a great challenge for this legislature and will be very important in the next 20 years. If we don't start taking severe and risky measures now for universities to regain this role as a social elevator, we will not move forward and fewer and fewer people will reach university.
--- Do you miss research?
--- I think what we are doing is very similar. Working as a team, with a purpose, thinking short and long term, listening and reflecting. I think it is a modus operandi that those of us who research practice continuously. Listening, reflecting, projecting and, above all, correcting. That is, monitoring yourself all the time and trying to reverse deviations as best you can. You can only do this as a team. I respect the research system a lot because I have practiced it from within and I want to do things very well. I wanted to do them well before and now even better. I think it is a very good opportunity, especially given the current moment. We are seeing how the world is moving and how everything changes very quickly. Knowledge can provide good evidence for making political decisions.