2020 National Research Awards given
On 26 October, in a ceremony at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the robotics and artificial intelligence specialist Carme Torras, and the leading HIV researcher Bonaventura Clotet received the 2020 National Research Award ex aequo from the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Pere Aragonès. The National Research Award for Young Talent, which went to ICREA research professor Núria Montserrat, and the National Award for Scientific Communication, which went to the popular science journal Mètode, were also presented.
The 2020 award was the 31st edition of these prizes, organised annually by the Generalitat de Catalunya together with the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation). The awards are the highest recognition of scientific and research activity, but not only that, it is also a distinction for dissemination and communication with which scientific knowledge is brought within the reach of all citizens.
In this edition, the main prize has been awarded ex aequo to two people for their relevant work: Carme Torras and Bonaventura Clotet. Torras is a research professor at the CSIC and head of the Perception and Manipulation research group at the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (CSIC-UPC). She has been awarded the prize for her work in artificial intelligence and assistive robotics, i.e. applied to the care and assistance of people. For his part, Clotet is director of the AIDS Research Institute, IrsiCaixa, and head of the Infectious Diseases Service at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital, and has been recognised for his international research over more than 40 years in the field of HIV and related diseases.
Núria Montserrat, from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, who last summer collaborated with Barcelona Science and Universities as curator of the City and Science Biennial, won the National Young Talent Award for her work on pluripotent stem cells and their application in the field of health. As for the journal Mètode, its trajectory and sustained quality, even at a time when the media have undergone profound transformation, earned it the National Award for Scientific Communication.
At the same ceremony, the National Award for Scientific Patronage was awarded to the Víctor Grífols i Lucas Foundation for promoting research and encouraging bioethical debate in the biomedical field. B. Braun Surgical won the National Public-Private Partnership Award for its network of collaborations in biomaterials research with universities. And the National Award for the Creation of a Science-Based Company went to the Centre for Genomic Regulation for promoting the synthetic biology spin-off to combat respiratory diseases, Pulmobiotics.