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The Ministry of the Economy presents the Severo Ochoa Award of Excellence to IRB Barcelona

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The renewal of the award, announced last October, brings with it 4 million euros of funding of the next four years.

This morning in Madrid, Joan Guinovart, director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), has been presented with a second Severo Ochoa Award of Excellence, in recognition of IRB Barcelona as one of the best centres in basic research in Spain. Chaired by the Secretary of State for R+D+I, Carmen Vela, the award ceremony was held at the head offices of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness and was attended by representatives from the 11 centres presented the distinction this year.

Announced by the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness in October, the award is decided upon by an independent jury comprising researchers of international repute, who evaluate the centres’ research programmes, human resources, follow-up plans, and results.

IRB Barcelona was presented this award in the first edition of the call in 2011. The award spans 4 years and comes with 1 million euros of funding per year during this period. Furthermore, this distinction allows the centres priority access to government initiatives and increases their visibility with respect to donations, among other benefits. The eight centres that received the award in 2011 have all been granted a renewal this year. A total of 23 research centres hold the Severo Ochoa Award of Excellence—11 of which are in Catalonia.

During the presentation ceremony of the Severo Ochoa Award, Guinovart said , "this outstanding science policy experiment has shown that the winning centres share some common features ".

The following centres have received the award this year:

Instituto de Ciencias Fotónicas (ICFO)

IRB Barcelona

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS)

Graduate School of Economics (Barcelona GSE)

Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (ICMAT)

Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC)

Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (BCBL)

Centre de Recerca en Agrigenomica (CRAG)

Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona (ICMAB)

About IRB Barcelona

The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to cure cancer and other diseases linked to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society, and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 researchers and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).