Pere Lluís Cabot: “To strengthen collaborative work with private enterprise we must instil a culture of mutual understanding”

In the May 2010 edition of the supplement “50 carreras”, published by the newspaper El Mundo, the UBʼs Faculty of Chemistry was rated the best faculty in Spain for the EHEA bachelorʼs degree in chemistry. What particular features make teaching at the Faculty so successful?

There are a lot, but perhaps one of the most important is that this we have more students and more teaching staff than any other faculty of chemistry in Spain. This enables us to offer courses in every conceivable area of chemistry, the quality of which is ensured by our highly-qualified teaching staff with different areas of specialization. The Facultyʼs lecturers and professors are committed to their teaching activities, and that makes a decisive contribution to our success.

Another feature that is particularly prized in scientific degrees is the importance we give to applied practical work. Our students have direct access to the Facultyʼs laboratory equipment and are given the chance to work individually, which helps them to develop skills and techniques that are valued highly in business and research.

We also have a tutorial system in which every new student at the Faculty is assigned a tutor for the entirety of their degree. The tutor is an important figure who is on hand at all times to offer guidance and advice. Students are also offered a wide range of activities designed to enhance their career prospects, such as a company placements programme. Every year we sign 200 new agreements with companies, which greatly increase the training options open to our students. To complete this area of our work, we organize careers guidance days and an annual business fair.

New students are invited to attend a welcoming event at the beginning of their first year, and those who complete their studies with us are rewarded for their efforts at a graduation ceremony. From an international perspective, we have a considerable number of Erasmus students from countries across Europe, around 40 of whom study at the Faculty each year, with 40 of our own students completing placements abroad. We also welcome students as part of the SICUE/SENECA programme, which provides funding for student exchange between Spanish universities.

This year, the Faculty is involved in the organization of an Erasmus Mundus masterʼs degree under the EC programme of the same name, which provides institutional funding and scholarships for the best students from around the world.

How will the introduction of the new EHEA bachelorʼs degrees improve the training offered to students at the Faculty?

I think that the area which has received most attention during the process of convergence to the European Higher Education Area is the integration of generic competences. In addition to specialized knowledge, university education must also provide students with other competences such as practical, communication and language skills. In the sciences we obviously need to ensure that our students have an excellent command of English.

As part of the new undergraduate structure we have introduced a first-year unit on basic chemistry - covering four individual subjects, two in basic theoretical chemistry and two experimental subjects - that provides students from other institutions with the fundamental knowledge they will need to start on the same footing as their classmates. Our aim is to ensure that the basic knowledge acquired at this level is comparable or superior to that offered by the old llicenciatura degrees. We have also integrated the final project into our bachelorʼs degree curricula, which gives students the opportunity to work on the generic competences outlined in their course plans.

Another major boost is the introduction of the second-year subject Quality and Prevention, which is new to the course plan. The general aim is to reflect the Facultyʼs long-standing commitment to laboratory safety and selective waste collection. The waste generated during practical sessions is collected by a company specializing in recovery and recycling, which helps us to minimize the level of contamination we produce.

Your links with the Faculty of Chemistry stretch back to your days as a student, when you completed your undergraduate and doctoral training at the UB. Why did you put yourself forward for the position of Dean? What are your aims for the future of the Faculty?

I have been involved in management for many years and my career has developed alongside the Faculty, so I feel like I know it well as an institution. Thatʼs why I took on the challenge of creating a new strategic plan, which sets out four fundamental areas for development.

The first focuses on strengthening the Facultyʼs reputation as a centre for cutting-edge research. The second is to promote greater internationalization through exchange programmes for students and staff and improved talent-attraction structures. The third area concerns adapting our facilities to new teaching and research requirements, and the fourth is aimed at consolidating our relationship with society through knowledge and technology transfer.

The Faculty of Chemistry has a strong relationship with the business sector. How do you think knowledge transfer can be improved?

Many of our research groups have long-standing relationships with companies built on a capacity for providing solutions to specific problems, so we have what I would call a tradition of knowledge and technology transfer. Nevertheless, we believe that more can be achieved in this area.

The university and business sectors developed independently for many years until we began to see the potential of working together. The Faculty has gone from strength to strength in recent years, largely thanks to its extensive human resources - we have 270 teaching and research staff belonging to 33 government-backed research groups - and facilities. The key is to strengthen collaborative work with private enterprise and to instil a culture of mutual understanding. Organizations such as the UBʼs Bosch i Gimpera Foundation and the FemCAT Foundation are involved in various schemes that bring the university and corporate partners closer together.

The Faculty also performs well in international research rankings such as the CHE-ExcellenceRanking, which highlights the levels of excellence the UB achieves in a range of subjects, including chemistry. What are the Facultyʼs particular research strengths?

The fact that we conduct research in every branch of chemistry and have talented researchers who display an enormous commitment to their work has helped us to secure funding for many projects and to carry out valuable and widely acknowledged research. Since 1990 the research groups attached to the Faculty have published more than 8,200 papers in indexed journals and accumulated over 122,000 external citations. This is a good demonstration of the fact that the research we produce receives international recognition. But I must stress the value of our human team and their level of commitment, particularly given that the funds they require are not always available.

On that note, do you think the business sector is a viable channel for obtaining research funding?

More importantly than the funding itself, I think that if more information about our research efforts were made available, more companies would be aware of and interested in our potential and what we can do for them. It would be good to convince more companies to sign agreements and contracts with the University so that our researchers can show what they are capable of. Universities train doctors, who specialize in research and have the skills to promote and direct innovation initiatives in the business world. Economically speaking, this is very important to the growth of the country as a whole.

Chemistry is often viewed negatively in society because of its association with all things artificial, yet it is the foundation of all natural processes. Do you think it is important to change societyʼs view of the discipline?

The notion that chemistry is a dark art aimed at supplanting nature and the root of many evils is a notion that we should work together to overturn. Advertisements which claim that a particular product contains fewer chemicals and is therefore more “natural” are distorting our view of reality. Chemistry is a body of knowledge and techniques that should - and does - enable us to be where we are today in terms of technological development. We have a lot of chemical products at home; salt, for example, is sodium chloride, and even water is a chemical product. But whether or not they are harmful depends on the use we make of them, because chemistry itself does not damage but its applications can.

For example, chemotherapy and other drugs are chemical substances that have a beneficial effect on the human body, and chemistry can also be used to decontaminate. We could perhaps draw a comparison with cooking. There is always a risk of making a mess, but a good cook will try not to so that it isn´t necessary to clean up afterwards. In the same way, in chemistry, when we look to create a novel and useful product we must be careful not to pollute the environment. Pollution can be prevented and even eradicated using the very tools that chemistry provides.