The president of the Balearic Government and the vice-president of CSIC visit IFISC
Nov. 21, 2018
The president of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, accompanied by the vice-president and Consellera d'Innovació, Investigació i Turisme, Isabel Busquets, the Conseller d'Educació i Universitat, Martí March, and other members of her government, together with the vice-president of Scientific and Technical Research of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Jesús Marco de Lucas, the rector of the UIB, Llorenç Huguet, and the president of the Consell Social, Francesca Mas, have attended the presentation of the distinction "Unit of Excellence Maria de Maeztu" to IFISC (UIB-CSIC), a seal awarded by the State Research Agency (AEI), belonging to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. During the event, Claudio Mirasso, scientific director of the research programme María de Maeztu, and Maxi San Miguel, director of the centre, explained to the attendees what this recognition will mean for IFISC and how the new resources associated with the Unit of Excellence will be invested, being the first entity of excellence in the Balearic Islands.
Those responsible for the project presented what will be the main line of research over the next few years, aimed at processing information in and by complex systems. Within this interdisciplinary approach, four lines of work will be addressed, such as information processing in biological systems, brain-inspired analogue computing, information and computing in quantum systems and information processing in socio-technical systems.
The María de Maeztu Excellence Unit, awarded to centers with fewer than 80 doctors in their ranks, aims to fund and accredit public research units that demonstrate a high level of scientific impact and competitiveness worldwide, as well as a strategic research program based on the generation of frontier knowledge. With these resources, IFISC will launch different programs for hiring pre and postdoctoral staff to attract local, national and, above all, international talent, the improvement of its two main infrastructures (the computer laboratory and Big Data and the nonlinear photonic lab), as well as the creation of a service unit focused on the analysis of Big Data and Machine Learning. Likewise, the rest of IFISC's usual actions will be continued and strengthened: colloquia of excellence, visits by national and international researchers, organisation of conferences and summer schools, scientific dissemination, publication of results in open access journals, etc.
The evaluation commission of the
Severo Ochoa y María de Maeztu excellence program, constituted by an
international scientific committee of renowned researchers, especially valued
that IFISC has been a pioneer in interdisciplinary research outside physics and
that, despite its small size, in a few years it has established itself
internationally, being comparable to centers in the USA or Germany in the same
topics. The evaluators also highlighted the high quality of IFISC's research,
published in the most prestigious international journals in the field. The
evaluation report gave IFISC a final score of 99.5 out of 100.
Photos: A.Costa (UIB)
