An ICN2 research and innovation project among 14 funded by the Barcelona City Council and 'la Caixa' Foundation

by Virginia Greco

The winning projects of the 2023 call for proposals were officially announced today at an award ceremony. The selected projects, led by universities and research centres, will tackle difficult challenges such as community health, sustainability, and climate change. DIGITS, led by ICN2 senior researcher Dr Maria Soler, is one of the 14 projects selected for funding.

The Barcelona City Council and the "la Caixa" Foundation have presented today the fourteen research and innovation projects that will receive grants under the Pla BCNCiència 2023 call for proposals. The award ceremony took place in the Salón de Crónicas (at the Barcelona City Council) and was attended by the deputy mayor for Economy, Finance, Economic Promotion and Tourism, Jordi Valls, and the director of the Area of Relations with Research and Health Institutions of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Ignasi López.

The selected projects —14 out of 51 proposals— provide innovative solutions to various societal challenges, spanning health, sustainability, and climate change, and will share the €2 million allocated to this call (€1,200,000 from the Barcelona City Council and €800,000 from the "la Caixa" Foundation). Among them is DIGITS, a project led by Dr Maria Soler, senior researcher in the NanoBiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the ICN2.

DIGITS (from ‘Diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases with optical nanotechnology’) aims to introduce a new rapid and reliable diagnostic technology that allows the early detection of these pathogens anywhere, non-invasively, and providing results in real time. The project will be led by the ICN2, with Dr Soler as the primary investigator, and developed in collaboration with the Hospital Vall d'Hebron and Centro Joven de Atención a las Sexualidades (CJAS).

This is the fourth edition of these grants by the Barcelona City Council and the "la Caixa" Foundation, the result of successive collaboration agreements signed between the two institutions, which date back to 2019. Their purpose is to increase public-private partnership in research projects that have an impact on the city.

The projects that were granted the subsidies involve a total of 34 entities, meeting one of the objectives of the call, which was to seek synergies between different centres and research teams. Seven of the projects are led by a university and seven by a research centre.