Professor Miquel Canals has been awarded with the Alejandro Malaspina National Research Award 2024.

The National Research Awards 2024 have twenty categories, each worth 30,000 euros. The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, emphasized that the awards “are considered to be the highest recognition in Spain in the field of scientific research”. Morant highlighted the talent of all the awardees, and stressed that their “excellent science not only contributes to the progress and well-being of society, but also to the strengthening of our country”. “This is the edition with the most female award winners, as in previous years there were fewer nominations of female researchers”, the minister also pointed out.

Professor Miquel Canals, from the UB’s Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics, is a leading international expert in the field of marine geosciences, as well as in the study of the impact of climate change on the marine environment and applied marine research, including geohazards. He founded the Marine Geosciences Consolidated Research Group and directs the UB Chair on Sustainable Blue Economy, an initiative of the UB and the environmental consultancy Tecnoambiente to promote the sustainable use of marine and coastal space and its natural resources, based on the principles of social justice, blue economy and ocean equity.

Canals was the first coordinator of the degree in Marine Sciences — an interdisciplinary degree that has been taught at the UB since the 2015-2016 academic year — and is also a member of the Assembly of international experts of the mission to address the major scientific challenges in the conservation of the environmental health of the marine environment, coasts and inland waters within the framework of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme.

He has led marine geological research campaigns aboard large oceanographic vessels to study underwater topography, geohazards in the sedimentary record and signs of climate change in the Mediterranean basin, the Atlantic Ocean and also the oceans at polar latitudes. Moreover, Canals is the first author of the study on winter cascading in the submarine canyons of the northwestern Mediterranean, published by the journal Nature in 2006 in collaboration with other experts from the UB, the Institute of Marine Sciences (CSIC) and the University of Perpignan’s Centre de Formation et de Recherche sur les Environnements Méditerranéens (CEFREM). He is also featured in the United Nations Environment Programme’s report In dead water. Merging of climate change with pollution, over-harvest, and infestations in the world’s fishing grounds.

Miquel Canals is a member of the Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC) and of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB), and has been awarded the Rei Jaume I Prize for the protection of the environment (2008) and the Distinction of the Government of Catalonia for the promotion of university research (2004), among other recognitions.