UB the leading Catalan university in the 2010 edition of the ICREA Academic Awards

 

 

The University of Barcelona prize-winners are:

 

Albert Bastardas, professor with the Department of General Linguistics at the UB and coordinator of the inter-university research group Complexity, Communication and Sociolinguistics. Dr. Bastardas holds PhDs in sociolinguistics from Laval University (Quebec, Canada) and in Catalan philology from the UB and has spent periods of research at Indiana University and the University of California in the United States and at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver) and York University (Toronto) in Canada. He was director of the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (CUSC) from its creation in 1998 until 2010. His principal research interests are Catalan sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, linguistic contact and sociolinguistic dynamics, processes of linguistic standardization, language and identity studies and other related areas.

 

 

Germà Bel is a professor with the Department of Economic Policy and World Economic Structure and directs the Research Group on Governments and Markets. He holds a masterʼs degree in economics from the University of Chicago and was advisor to the Spanish Ministry of Public Administrations and the Ministry of Public Works and Transport from 1990 to 1993. In the general elections of 2000 he became a member of the Spanish Parliament representing the Province of Barcelona. Germà Bel has spent periods as a visiting professor at Harvard University, Cornell University and the European University Institute, and has continued his teaching and research activities at the UB since 2004. In 2009 he won the William E. Mosher and Frederick C. Mosher Award for the best public administration review article, awarded by the American Society for Public Administration.

 

 

Marián Boguñà has been an aggregate professor with the Department of Fundamental Physics since 2008. In 1999 he was selected for a Fogarty Fellowship by the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC, and in 2003 he was awarded a Ramón y Cajal research contract at the UB. He was chair of the international conference BCNetWORKSHOP 2008, Trends and Perspectives in Complex Networks, and in 2008 was designated an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society. His research focuses on the study of complex systems, in particular those systems comprising a large number of units that interact through complex topologies and are therefore suitable for analysis with statistical physics tools. These types of systems can be found in diverse fields, including societies, cellular networks, the Internet, etc. One of the major challenges in this field is to understand the correlation between the complex topologies shown by these systems and the functions they perform.

 

 

Marta Cascante is a professor with the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Biology) and the principal investigator of the Integrative Biochemistry and Cancer Therapy research group. The group forms part of the Institut of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), the Cancer Cooperative Research Thematic Network (RTICC) and the Reference Network of R+D+i on Theoretical and Computational Chemistry of Catalonia. Marta Cascante, the author of more than 150 publications, focuses her research on the study of cancer and metabolic diseases, using a systems biology approach to determine the basic networks and pathways in the development and progression of these pathologies.

 

Albert Cirera is an associate professor with the Department of Electronics and conducts research as part of the group Micro-nanotechnologies and Nanoscopies for Electrophotonic Devices (MIND) and at the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (IN2UB). He has directed several technology transfer projects and received the 2008 Antoni CaparrósPrize, awarded by the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation and the University of Barcelona Board of Trustees, which recognizes achievements in promoting entrepreneurial culture in the framework of the UB Group. His main research interests are the study of nanotechnology and its applications to the development of nanoelectronic systems and nanosystems, nanoengineering of ceramic materials, the development of low-temperature superionic materials for fuel cells, and applied simulation and modelling of electronic materials.

 

 

Francisco Ciruela-Alférez, a lecturer with the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapeutics and director of the Neuropharmacology and Pain research group. He received a bachelorʼs degree in biology from the University of Barcelona in 1990 and completed his doctoral studies at the UB under the supervision of Dr. E.I. Canela and Dr. J. Mallol. It was during this period of research that he discovered the existence of adenosine A1 receptor homodimers, in a pioneering study that study that contributed to the discovery GPCR oligomerization. After obtaining his PhD he carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in the MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at Oxford University (1996-1999) with an EMBO grant, and a subsequent fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology at the same university (1999-2000). Ciruela-Alférez currently researches GPCRs, focusing particularly on the study of pathological mechanisms of GPCR oligomerization in the central nervous system.

 

 

Luis Víctor Dieulefait is a lecturer with the Department of Algebra and Geometry and a member of the Number Theory Research Group. He holds a bachelorʼs degree in mathematics from Rosario National University (Argentina) and a PhD in mathematics from the UB, he completed in 2001 and for which he received Marie Curie and YPF fellowships. He has since completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Paris XIII and the Mathematics Research Centre of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CRM-UAB). In 2003 he was awarded a Ramón y Cajal contract at the UB, where he was made associate professor in 2007. As a researcher, he has worked at Imperial College (London), the University of California, Berkeley, the University Paris XIII, the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES, France), UCLA and the University of California-Berkeley, as well as spending a year at Harvard University in 2008. He focuses particularly on Galois representations and modular or automorphic forms and how they can be linked to one another, in work carried out under the Langlands programme. Dieulefait studies questions of modularity, following the approach introduced by A. Wiles in proof of Fermatʼs Last Theorem.

 

 

Carles Escera i Micó is a professor with the Department of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology and directs the UBʼs Institute for Research on the Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (IR3C). He is the coordinator of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group and has directed several studies focusing on the mechanisms of cognitive brain function, carried out in partnership with researchers from over ten countries and using functional neuroimaging techniques and electroencephalography (EEG). He is also interested in how these mechanisms are altered in a broad spectrum of neurological, psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. He is currently examining the way in which the auditory system extracts the regularity from the acoustic environment to allow for conscious auditory experience, for example in music or language perception.

 

 

Alberto Maydeu is a professor with the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment. He is the principal investigator of the research group on Structural Equation Modelling and Item Response Theory, and focuses his research on the development of new quantitative methods of application in the fields of psychology and marketing. He has recently developed goodness-of-fit tests for highly dispersed discrete data and new methods for modelling forced-choice items. He has won a number of prizes and honours, including the American Psychological Association dissertation research award, the Catalan Young Investigator Award, and the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology Cattell Award for best researchers under 40. He is currently an editor of the journal Psychometrika and has published books including The SAGE Handbook of Quantitative Methods in Psychology (2008) and Contemporary Psychometrics (2005).

 

 

Carme Muñoz is a professor with the Department of English and German and coordinator of the Language Acquisition Research Group (GRAL). Her main research interests are second language acquisition and bilingualism. She has directed several research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and taken part in international research projects. Between 1995 and 2003 she was responsible for coordinating the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project, which explored the influence of age on language learning. Her most recent postgraduate courses have focused on individual differences in second language acquisition. She has served as a member of the International Committee of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) and member of the Executive Committee of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA). She is currently Vice-President of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA).

 

 

Susana Narotzky has been a professor with the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the History of America and Africa since 2006, and has received a number of awards and distinctions including the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for Collaborative Research. After graduating from the University of Barcelona in 1982 she sought specialized training in anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York, where she obtained a masterʼs degree in 1984 and a PhD in 1990. She has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and is currently is currently President of the European Association of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her research focuses on the micro-sociological articulations of popular economic models. She is currently the scientific coordinator of the EU FP7 project “Models and their Effects on Development paths: an Ethnographic and comparative Approach to knowledge transmission and livelihood strategies” (MEDEA) (2009-2012), and since 1998 has been head of the UBʼs Study Group on Reciprocity (GER).

 

 

Josep Maria Paredes is a full professor and Head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the UB, where he coordinates the High Energy Astrophysics research group. He received the 2000 City of Barcelona Award in the area of scientific research for his description of a high-energy gamma-ray-emitting persistent microquasar, a stellar object with unique properties discovered in the LS 5039 binary system of our galaxy. His main research interests are the multispectral study of galactic high-energy sources, using terrestrial and space-based equipment, and the modelling of emission processes in a range of scenarios (jets, shocks, interaction with the interstellar medium, etc.) to improve our understanding of particle acceleration processes and radiation mechanisms in the non-thermal Universe. Since 2006 he has been an active member of the MAGIC Collaboration Board, which operates the largest Cherenkov telescope in the world for the detection of galactic and extra-galactic gamma rays.

 

 

Julio Rozas is a professor with the Department of Genetics, a researcher for the Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Group and a member of the executive committee of the Institute for Research on Biodiversity (IRBio-UB). He is also a member of the Spanish National Committee of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) and the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Network of Biodiversity, Evolution and Molecular Systematics (REDES). Rozas is an expert in bioinformatics and comparative genomics, population genomics and molecular adaptation in Drosophila and Arabidopsis, and has the honour of being the first author of the most cited Spanish scientific paper for the period 1999-2009, according to results published by Essential Science Indicators. He has worked on the genomic sequencing of the human body louse (Pediculus humanus humanus), which has the smallest genome studied to date in an insect species, and the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum), a parasite responsible for severe agricultural infestations.

 

 

Miquel Rubí is a professor with the Department of Fundamental Physics and an expert in condensed matter physics. He is the director of the Statistical Physics research group and focuses his research on the study of nonequilibrium phenomena at the nanoscale, their basic principles and their applications in biology and nanoscience. His previous roles include head of the Department of Fundamental Physics at the UB, director of the National Physics Programme for the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and national representative for various European Union programmes. Since 1996 he has been director of the Sitges Conference on Statistical Physics. He was also awarded the 2003 von Humboldt Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, for his contributions to the theory of stochastic processes, and the 2003 Onsager Medal by the University of Trondheim for contributions to the field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.