The COVID-19 pandemic brought science closer to the citizen, changing their perception of the importance of scientific advances. In addition, the disinformation and fake news associated with the pandemic demonstrated the consequences of not clearly communicating these scientific advances. That is why from the Industrial Doctorate Plan we consider it vitally important to make our collaborative research projects understood.
During 2022, the Industrial Doctorates Plan has 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 objective is to expand the number of reports during 2023, until reaching the maximum number of projects made visible for their social and economic impact. Effectively making this collaborative research, development and innovation visible and communicating 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 invite you to discover this selection of Industrial Doctorate projects, good examples of knowledge transfer, of 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 to be in the tens of billions of euros in the coming years. Quantum computing will impact a number of areas, such as healthcare, 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 uses a different logic than 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 freight mobility in Barcelona, the case of Barcelona City Council
Although the paradigm of urban mobility will not change immediately, its structure is currently being modified in the largest European cities. The 2030 Agenda has promoted the creation of a new urbanism in these cities. There are many objectives that need to be achieved to properly manage sustainable urban centers: traffic management, shared use of vehicles, use of renewable energies in public transport, urban planning and design that promotes sustainable mobility, etc.
These challenges are a small example of everything that an industrial doctoral project, led by the Barcelona City Council and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia , aims to address to find a solution. Specifically, the project comprehensively addresses the sustainability of current Barcelona urban logistics, proposing measures to harmonize e-commerce and merchandise logistics 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 currently incurable types of childhood cancer, 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 into 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 that 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 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. Finding a solution for cases diagnosed with a very uncommon type of childhood brain cancer, which currently has no treatment, is the objective of this project. Dr. Meritxell Teixidó , CEO of Gate2Brain, explains how, within the framework 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 to 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, in 10 years we will reach the global warming ceiling established by the Paris Agreements , which specifies a maximum temperature increase of 1.5 °C. Climate change is a reality and the consequences are already evident. When a temperature increase occurs, it is only the beginning of a complex process involving many possible scenarios. Drought and floods, fires and melting polar ice, atmospheric 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 that are 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 in the projects, Dr. Ricard Garcia-Valls (Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili) 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 greatest 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 a company that produces immersive content and experiences through creativity and technology, which has earned numerous awards. Its Industrial Doctorate 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. Ultimately, it seeks to improve accessibility to these devices and access to their content in order to contribute to increasing the autonomy and quality of life of the group.
The project has been able to detect the most common accessibility problems of people with reduced mobility, given that not all real physical spaces, in general, are fully adapted in an inclusive way. Thanks to the use of immersive technologies, users with reduced mobility have the opportunity, as the team's doctoral student Alicia Cañellas-Mayor explains: "to be able to 'teleport' digitally and immersively to spaces or places that are difficult to access and that they might not otherwise be able to visit."
One of the secondary objectives of the research carried out by this project is precisely to raise awareness in the augmented reality technology sector in aspects related 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 group visible to the rest of society in an immersive way, to carrying out immersive 360° video conferences, to controlling 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 content and video tagging and indexing services 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, a leader in creating the first artificial intelligence system that offers services for tagging and indexing content and videos on the internet, so that they can be found 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 work consists of teaching artificial intelligence what is in the videos so that the next time it encounters a concept it can recognize it. This means, for example, that the system understands when an unusual event is happening in some images that will be interesting to the viewer.
As he explained to us in an interview, Bou-Balust believes 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 car navigation, which many people might not use, but since it is a very simple voice system, everyone ends up using it."
You can read the full report at this link .
