More than a hundred attendants in the institutional act for the 20th anniversary of Barcelona Science Park
The Barcelona Science Park (PCB) held the institutional act to close the scheduled activities to commemorate its twentieth anniversary. The ceremony, presided by the rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Elias, gathered more than a hundred attendants from the academic, scientific, business and governing fields.
The Barcelona Science Park (PCB) held the institutional act to close the scheduled activities to commemorate its twentieth anniversary. The ceremony, presided by the rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Elias, gathered more than a hundred attendants from the academic, scientific, business and governing fields.
After welcoming the attendants, Maria Terrades, director of the Barcelona Science Park, dedicated some words to those people and institutions that are linked to the creation and consolidation of this project -pioneer in Spain- launched by the University of Barcelona in 1997 to promote excellence research, knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship in the field of life sciences.
Afterwards, Terrades compared the ceremony to a journey that starts with the basic research and ends in innovation: “This journey comes with elements of the Park that are representatives of the community we created over these twenty years, and representative of the key pieces we need to get this innovation”.
After the screening of a commemorative video, the director of the PCB revealed the most significant data that show the growth of PCB. After twenty years, the Barcelona Science Park is one of the reference ecosystems in Europe regarding scientific, technological and business innovation. With a 100,000 square meters surface and a community of 2,700 professionals -54 % of them being women-, the PCB has become an attraction pole for talent, where more than a hundred public and private entities interact in a privileged environment, creating synergies that strengthen the collaboration and exchange of knowledge for the creation of a new business tissue.
Last, Terrades referred to future challenges: “The Park has twice the amount of professionals it had -1,300- over the last eight years, and there is room for growth. As you may know, there are still 9,000 square meters, for offices and laboratories, so there will be more activity, and this is one of the big challenges: finding the funding to adapt these spaces and to grow the community up to 3,500 professionals in the health sector”.
Other distinguished members of the PCB community talked in the activity: Meritxell Teixidó, adjunct researcher in the Institute for Biomedical Research (IRB Barcelona), as spokesperson for the scientific collective; Josep Samitier, director of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), representing public entities; Joan Feixas, director of Enantia -an UB spin-off and one of the first companies in PCB-, representing a successful case of entrepreneur initiatives, and Carlos R. Plata-Salamán, scientific, medical and R&D director of the pharmaceutical company Esteve, as a paradigm of an international big pharma in the PCB.
Joan Elias, rector of the University of Barcelona, closed the event stating the PCB is “a concentration of exceptional talent that contributes to creating value to our city and country. A leading institution in transfer in the industrial sector and society in general. The PCB gathers two excellence centers Severo Ochoa, two excellence centers Maria de Maeztu and three singular scientific and technic infrastructures: the National Genomic Analysis Centre (CNAG), the Electronic Transmission Microscopy Unit and the Magnetic Resonance Laboratory”, noted the rector.
Elias went over the history of PCB remembering key people in its birth: the rectors Antoni Caparrós, Màrius Rubiralta and Josep Maria Bricall, the director of the Park Francesc Santacana and Josep Maria Puig-Salellas, former president of the Board of Trustees.
This institutional act to close the celebration of the first twenty years of the PCB -like the event for the Park Community on September 20- has been carried out with the sponsorship of Enantia, Esteve, Grup Ordesa, the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC) and Qiagen; and the support of Bellavista, the Scientific and Technologic Centers of the University of Barcelona (CCiTUB), the Biotechnology Business Institute (IEB), Ferrer, Iproteos and ProteoDesign, and the collaboration of Estrella Samm, Ferrovial Servicios and Suez.