The COVID-19 pandemic brought science closer to the citizen, changing their perception of the importance of scientific advances. In addition, the misinformation and fake news associated with the pandemic demonstrated the consequences of not clearly communicating these scientific advances. For this reason, from the Industrial Doctorates Plan, we consider it vitally important to make our collaborative research projects understood.
During 2022, the Industrial Doctorates Plan wanted to begin to make visible the impact of some of its projects by preparing in-depth interviews and reports, some of which are also good examples of disruptive innovation. The aim is to increase the number of reports during 2023, until reaching the maximum number of projects visible for their social and economic impact. Visualizing and effectively communicating this collaborative research, development and innovation has many advantages. On average, the projects that receive the best funding are those that sell best, those that best explain their own research and business innovation. The impact of the message will largely determine the credibility and importance of each project.
We therefore invite you to discover this selection of Industrial Doctorate projects, good examples of knowledge transfer and the impact of research on the territory. In short, examples of how collaborative research can contribute to the competitiveness and internationalization of the Catalan industrial fabric.
According to the Boston Consulting Group , the economic impact of quantum technologies is estimated at tens of millions of euros in the coming years. Quantum computing will affect a number of areas including health, finance, encryption and security to name a few. In fact, we are already using quantum physics in laser technology, magnetic resonance imaging, and computer chips. It has the potential to revolutionize our world.
The company Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech , with seven Industrial Doctorate projects on quantum computing and algorithms, is trying to realize the potential of quantum computing by developing both software and hardware in this field. The development of these projects is carried out in a dual environment, business and academic, which generates two complementary lines of thought, and which the company knows how to take advantage of. The company has collaborated with the Institute of High Energy Physics , the University of Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia .
Their main mission is to build a quantum computer, and doing it from a purely academic perspective was very complicated due to the funding of the project, which is why they opted for the collaborative research offered by the Industrial Doctorates. Marta Pascual, senior quantum engineer in the Qilimanjaro theory team in Barcelona, explained to us in an interview what exactly a quantum computer is: "it is a computing system that makes use of a logic different from that of conventional computers" . The possibility of encoding information in this type of quantum states allows the manipulation of information to be much more efficient and therefore much faster when calculating certain types of problems.
You can read the full report at this link .
New model of urban goods mobility in Barcelona, the case of Barcelona City Council
Although the paradigm of urban mobility will not change immediately, its structure is currently changing in the largest European cities. The 2030 Agenda has promoted the creation of new urbanism in these cities. There are many objectives that need to be achieved to properly manage sustainable urban centres: traffic management, shared use of vehicles, use of renewable energy in public transport, urban planning and design that promotes sustainable mobility, etc.
These challenges are a small example of everything that an industrial doctorate project, led by the Barcelona City Council and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya , aims to address in order to find a solution. Specifically, the project comprehensively addresses the sustainability of Barcelona's current urban logistics, proposing harmonization measures between e-commerce logistics and goods with the use of public space for other citizen activities.
In order to cope with the exponential increase in online shopping that the team has detected, they suggest a new model of goods distribution with the aim of reducing the environmental impact, but also minimizing congestion and noise . According to the project team, it would also serve to achieve a reduction in the use of public space and, therefore, this space could be improved and made available to citizens.
You can read the full report at this link .
Transporting drugs to the brain to treat types of childhood cancer that are currently incurable, the case of Gate2Brain
The collaboration between the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute (IRSJD – UB) and the company Gate2Brain will allow the use of a technology to cross the blood-brain barrier in the brain and administer drugs. This applied research aims to provide safe and transferable anticancer drugs for juvenile cancer, specifically those that are already lethal or cause permanent damage.
To take a step forward in therapeutic studies before applying them to the definitive clinic, and thoroughly studying the impact of drugs on the body of children affected by cancer, researchers from the IRB Barcelona, the University of Barcelona ( UB) and the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute – Sant Joan de Déu Hospital (SJD-UB) created the spin-off Gate2Brain in 2020, a finalist in the Catalan Pitch Competition 2021.
The technology to transport drugs to the brain is the innovation that Gate2Brain brings to biomedical research. The aim of this project is to find a solution for cases diagnosed with a very uncommon type of childhood brain cancer, which currently have no treatment. Doctor Meritxell Teixidó , CEO of Gate2Brain, tells us how, as part of the Industrial Doctorate, the project team aims to "improve the transport of a chemotherapeutic agent to fight against pediatric brain tumors that have an intact barrier and this makes it difficult cure".
You can read the full report at this link .
Reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere to fight climate change, the case of the Greennova Foundation
2021 was the sixth warmest year on record, and the 10 warmest years occurred between 2010 and 2021. If this trend continues, within 10 years we will reach the global warming ceiling set by the Paris Agreement , which specifies a maximum increase of 1.5 °C in temperature. Climate change is a reality and the consequences are already evident. When a rise in temperature occurs, it is only the beginning of a complex process involving many possible scenarios. Drought and floods, fires and polar ice melt, global warming are just some of the possibilities.
Faced with this scenario, two Industrial Doctorate projects have set out to fight climate change by providing solutions based on the idea of removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air. Precisely, the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is one of the main causes of climate change. The two projects are part of collaborative research between the Greennova Foundation and the Rovira i Virgili University and the University of Barcelona .
One of the researchers of the projects, Dr. Ricard Garcia-Valls (Chemical Engineering professor at Rovira i Virgili University) believes that if these projects work "we will be able to clean the CO₂ already present in the atmosphere to leave it at correct values for climate balance". One of the applications they propose with the most domestic impact is installing a device in a home or office to capture the CO₂ that all the people who live there breathe.
You can read the full report at this link .
Immersive technology to improve the lives of people with reduced mobility, the case of Vysion from the Mediapro Group
Vysion is an award-winning company that produces immersive content and experiences through creativity and technology. His Industrial PhD project promotes the use of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technology to improve personal well-being and social interactions in groups of people with reduced mobility. In short, it seeks to improve accessibility to these devices and access to their contents in order to contribute to increasing the autonomy and quality of life of the group.
The project has been able to detect what are the most common accessibility problems of people with reduced mobility, given that not all real physical spaces, in general, are fully inclusively adapted. Thanks to the use of immersive technologies, users with reduced mobility have the opportunity, as team PhD student Alicia Cañellas-Mayor explains: "to be able to "teleport" digitally and in an immersive way to spaces or places of difficult access that, perhaps in another way, they could not visit».
One of the secondary objectives of the research carried out by this project is precisely to raise awareness in the field of extended reality technology in aspects linked to accessibility and universal design. The project has also served to detect other possible uses, from using these technologies to make the reality of the collective visible to the rest of society in an immersive way, to hold immersive 360° video conferences, to control home automation environments, to being able to practice stimulation activities and learning or rehabilitation processes.
You can read the full report at this link .
Artificial intelligence applied to services for labeling and indexing content and videos on the internet, the case of Vilynx
Elisenda Bou-Balust is the co-founder and CTO of Vilynx , an emerging company with four Industrial Doctorates, at the forefront of creating the first artificial intelligence system that offers labeling and indexing services for content and videos on the internet, to be able to find - them from searches. The company was Apple's first acquisition in Spain in 2020.
The projects led by Bou-Balust use technology to sort and classify the tons of audiovisual content that accumulate on the internet. The job is to teach the artificial intelligence what's in the videos so that the next time it encounters a concept it can recognize it. This means that, for example, the system understands when something out of the ordinary is happening in some images that will be interesting to the viewer.
As he explained to us in an interview, Bou-Balust considers that one of the positive aspects of artificial intelligence is that it can go unnoticed: "in a way they humanize machine interfaces. A very clear example is the car navigation, which many people might not use, but because it is a very simple voice system, everyone ends up using it."
You can read the full report at this link .
