We highlight three business initiatives linked to the Industrial Doctorate Plan of the Generalitat de Catalunya that have accumulated high-profile national recognition. The cases of Marina Rigau, Eva Colás, Silvia Frutos and Patricia Aymà illustrate a generation of entrepreneurs who combine scientific excellence and industrial vision, and who have chosen collaborative doctoral research as a strategic lever for their growth.
The Industrial Doctorate Plan of the Generalitat de Catalunya, as an instrument that articulates doctoral research between universities and companies, has among its participating companies a growing number of companies led by female scientists. The diversity of sectors represented—gynecological diagnostics, gene therapy and bioplastics—reflects the transversal scope of a program that, by placing female leaders in corporate responsibility, contributes to making reference models visible for future STEAM generations.
The three cases presented below illustrate a common pattern: female scientists with basic doctoral training who have pivoted towards high-impact entrepreneurship, dragging new industrial doctoral students into their business project. MiMARK, SpliceBio and Benviro also share a relevant characteristic from the perspective of the Industrial Doctorate Plan: they are not companies that host a doctorate on a circumstantial basis, but rather organizations where applied and strategic research is part of the innovation model.
The Industrial Doctorates Plan claims them as benchmarks of what is possible when science, female leadership and industry work in the same direction.
MiMARK: the gynecological fluid as a new diagnostic frontier
MiMARK was born as a spin-off of the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) with the aim of revolutionizing gynecological diagnosis and improving women’s health and quality of life. Its co-founders, Marina Rigau (CEO) and Eva Colás (CSO), have been recognized as TOP 1 in the IV Edition of the EAE Top 10 Mujeres Emprendedoras de Cataluña award from EAE Business School Barcelona . While Rigau leads the strategy and management of the company, it is Eva Colás Ortega who holds direct corporate responsibility for the current Industrial Doctorate project (2022 edition), as principal investigator of the VHIR Biomedical Research Group in Gynecology. Marina Rigau’s connection to the Plan is, therefore, that of a co-founder who has made MiMARK the business vehicle that hosts and makes this doctoral research possible.
Rigau, trained in Biology at the University of Barcelona and a PhD in Biomedicine at VHIR, arrived at MiMARK after a six-year period in research management at IDIBELL and an Executive MBA at IESE. The foundational moment came in October 2020, when the project won the EIT Health Wild Card in the Women’s Health edition, obtaining initial funding of 1.5 million euros.
Its first product, WomEC, is an in vitro diagnostic test for endometrial cancer—the most prevalent gynecological cancer in developed countries, with more than 6,700 new cases per year in Spain. The company is also working on developing a second product to improve the diagnosis of endometriosis.
The MiMARK Industrial Doctorate (2022 edition)
The Industrial Doctorate linked to MiMARK , jointly supervised by the company and VHIR , focuses on the complete development of the WomEC test: from the design of the prototype based on antibody technology to clinical validation, including its adaptation as a mass spectrometry test. The clinical context that justifies the investment in doctoral research is eloquent: endometrial cancer affects all women who consult for abnormal vaginal bleeding, but only between 5 and 10% of them will ultimately receive this diagnosis. Despite this low specificity of the symptom, all must undergo the same invasive diagnostic process, and in up to 22% of cases the aspiration biopsy does not provide sufficient cellular material, forcing them to resort to hysteroscopy.
Furthermore, interobserver variability in pathological interpretation can generate up to 55% incorrect staging in preoperative diagnosis. WomEC wants to eliminate these bottlenecks with an objective molecular test, and the industrial doctoral student is a central piece of this path from bench to market.
SpliceBio: rewriting the boundaries of gene therapy
Silvia Frutos, co-founder and CTO of SpliceBio , has been recognized in the TOP 6 of the EAE Top 10 Mujeres Emprendedoras de Cataluña award. Founded in 2020 by Frutos and Miquel Vila-Perelló, SpliceBio develops gene therapies based on its own Protein Splicing platform, originated from research in the Muir laboratory at Princeton University. Frutos has a doctoral degree in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona and carried out postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University, where she contributed to fundamental work on intein-mediated protein splicing mechanisms.
SpliceBio’s platform addresses a structural limitation of AAV (adenovirus-associated) vectors, which are the standard vehicle for gene therapy: their inability to transport genes larger than 4.7 kilobases. Using inteins, the company divides the therapeutic gene into two fragments that are introduced separately into the body, where the inteins splice the two halves together to reconstitute the protein of interest and treat the disease.
The result is a remarkable expansion model: in June 2025, SpliceBio closed a $135 million Series B financing round, led by EQT Life Sciences and Sanofi Ventures, representing the largest round of a biotech company registered in Spain to date. The lead program, SB-007, targets Stargardt disease, a common cause of youthful vision loss with no treatment available on the market. Silvia Frutos is the company manager of the current Industrial Doctorate project (2023 edition).
SpliceBio Industrial Doctorates (2019 and 2023 editions)
SpliceBio’s link with the Industrial Doctorate Plan extends across two projects that illustrate the evolution of the company itself. The first, from the 2019 edition and already completed with a thesis, was developed in collaboration with the Translational Synthetic Biology group of Pompeu Fabra University and established the experimental bases for the use of split inteins in the reconstitution of the LAMA2 gene —involved in muscular dystrophy, with a coding sequence of ~9.4 kb, well above the 4.7 kb threshold of AAV vectors—, directly contributing to the scientific foundation on which the company’s current platform has been built.
The second project, in force since the 2023 edition and executed with the Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS, Ramon Llull University), faces a critical technological refinement challenge: improving the degradation of inteins once they have fulfilled their function of intracellular protein ligation. These residual fragments, if they accumulate, could interfere with other cellular processes. The industrial doctoral student works on the design and screening of degron libraries —peptide sequences that direct proteins to the proteasome for their elimination— to identify the combinations that maximize the efficiency of therapeutic ligation and minimize by-products. A project that, in short, does precision science about precision itself.
Patricia Aymà and Benviro: circular economy to transform waste into bioplastics
Patricia Aymà Maldonado (Òdena, 1993), co-founder, president and CTO of Benviro, has been awarded the Princess of Girona CreaEmpresa 2026 Award , in an event presided over by HM the Queen held in Huesca on February 27, 2026, within the framework of the Princess of Girona Foundation’s Talent Tour.
The jury, chaired by Irene Cano, general director of Meta for Spain and Portugal, recognized her career for having transformed a scientific vision into a scalable industrial reality, demonstrating that the transition to biodegradable materials is not only an ethical imperative, but a viable and disruptive business model. Aymà herself expressed her commitment in her acceptance speech :
"Behind this project there is a lot of effort and a great dream: to respond to a problem that affects us all, the impact of microplastics. We have an alternative, they are listening to us and we are starting to change the world from Spain. We want to represent the Foundation with leadership, supporting women and defending science."
Aymà trained in Biotechnology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and completed a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the University of Barcelona. Under his technological leadership, Benviro —which legally operates as VEnvirotech Biotechnology SL— has scaled from the laboratory to industrial production, with an operational plant in Murcia and collaborations with more than 20 large companies in sectors such as food, cosmetics and packaging. The company’s circular model transforms industrial by-products into new materials without generating microplastics.
Benviro’s research dimension is embodied in three active Industrial Doctorate projects, each addressing a specific challenge in the production chain, in collaboration with three Catalan universities: the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) with Eurecat, and the University of Girona (UdG).
The first project, with the UPC, focuses on the physicochemical characterization and applications of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) synthesized from mixed microbial cultures fed with industrial waste. PHAs are polyesters of bacterial origin, biodegradable and biocompatible, with applications ranging from food packaging to biomedical tissue engineering. The second project, with Eurecat and the UAB, optimizes the hydrolysis of agroindustrial waste to maximize the generation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs), the precursors necessary for the bacterial synthesis of PHA — a process that is scaled up to pilot reactors of more than 400 liters. The third project, with the UdG, addresses a technical bottleneck: how to efficiently concentrate these VFAs before transforming them into PHA, exploring membrane techniques such as direct and reverse osmosis. Three doctorates that cover the process from start to finish, and that turn Benviro into a living industrial laboratory where doctoral research directly accelerates the transition towards a petrochemical-free plastics industry.
The voice of the protagonists of the DI Plan in Benviro
The strategic value of this commitment to doctoral research is clearly expressed by Noèlia Márquez, co-founder and CEO of Benviro, in a recent interview published by the Industrial Doctorates Plan itself:
"In the day-to-day business of companies, we are not always focused on pure scientific research or understanding the foundation of each process. This collaboration gives us the possibility of scientifically delving deeper into our technology. Understanding it deeply gives us a decisive competitive advantage to grow as an innovative company."
For Márquez, the presence of three simultaneous industrial doctorates is not accidental: ” It is not a matter of chance, but a strategic decision because we consider them very useful tools for our development .” And he adds a key to the company-university relationship that applies to the entire sector: ” As a company, if we obtain a very good result, but we cannot take it out of the laboratory, it is of no use to us. For us, this is really key. ”
A concrete example of this impact is the project of Montserrat Jiménez Urpí, an industrial PhD student in the framework of the collaboration between Benviro, Eurecat and the UAB. Her research has allowed the scaling of the hydrolysis and fermentation processes to a 400-liter pilot plant to be validated. In the words of the industrial PhD in a recent interview also published by Pla DI, the key has been to adapt both hydrolysis and fermentation to the specific characteristics of each real waste, assuming its inherent variability and translating it into a robust and industrially applicable process:
"Committing to an industrial doctorate in this context allows me to combine applied research with industrial reality, generating a tangible environmental impact."
The result translates directly into competitiveness: greater control of the initial phases of the process guarantees the traceability and mechanical properties of the final polymer, opening the door to high-value sectors such as premium packaging or cosmetics, where the reliability of the material is a sine qua non. Jiménez summarizes this with a forward-looking view shared by the entire team: in five years, the use of biodegradable materials will not be a differentiating element, but an indispensable requirement for most industrial sectors.
