BSC achieves Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence accreditation

08 November 2022

The Ministry of Science and Innovation has announced the 18 research centers recognized in the call for 2021 for their scientific leadership and ability to attract talent

The Ministry of Science and Innovation has awarded the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) the accreditation of Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence, the highest national award given to Spanish research institutions that stand out for the quality and impact of their research and for their scientific leadership at national and international level.

The Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) made public last Friday the proposal for the provisional resolution of the 2021 call for the granting of accreditations and public funds for Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence and María de Maeztu Units of Excellence, which recognize the competitiveness of research centers and units of excellence in our country and their ability to attract talent.

The Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence accreditation is accompanied by government funding of 4 million euros over four years (2023-2026) with the aim of supporting ongoing projects, enabling the opening of new lines of research and helping the center to increase its international scientific profile. This is the third occasion that the BSC has received this accreditation, having previously obtained it in the periods 2012-2015 and 2016-2020.

The project proposed by the BSC for the 2023-2026 program combines actions to strengthen the center's leadership in Open Hardware and Software and in the co-design of HPC applications, as well as actions to promote diversity, education, technology transfer and dissemination of results. The main goal is to realize BSC’s vision as the world’s leading research center on the Open HPC Stack and grand challenge applications, providing a research environment that promotes inclusive and equitable career development, engages with society, and transfers knowledge and technology for a sustainable future.

Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence and María de Maeztu Units of Excellence.

With the 18 centers and research units recognized in this resolution, there are now 56 institutions of scientific excellence distinguished by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, which will allocate 54 million euros in this call. This endowment has increased by 25% with respect to the previous edition, which has increased the number of accredited centers and units by 12%, from 50 to 56. The financial endowment for each Severo Ochoa center will be 4 million euros and for each María de Maeztu unit 2 million euros.

The Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, pointed out that in addition, more than 400 predoctoral contracts will be assigned to the Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu programs. "We give greater opportunities to young researchers in our country," she said.

In addition to the BSC, the centers accredited with the Severo Ochoa distinction in the 2021 call are the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), the Centro de Investigación Cooperativa en Biociencias (CIC BioGUNE), the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBM), the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), the Instituto de Agroquímica y Tecnología de Alimentos (IATA), the Instituto de Tecnología Química (ITQ), the Instituto de Neurociencias (IN) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA).

This year, the units accredited with the María de Maeztu distinction are the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy (BIAP), the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), the Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos (IFISC), the Department of Information and Communication Technologies of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Department of Economics of the Universidad Carlos III, the Institut de Química Teòrica i Computacional (IQTC), the Instituto Mediterráneo de Estudios Avanzados (IMEDEA), the Institut de Neurociències de la Universidad de Barcelona (UB-Neuro) and the Instituto de Investigación en Nutrición y Seguridad Alimentaria (INSA).