The 2022 City of Barcelona Awards in the scientific disciplines have been announced
The juries of the Ciutat de Barcelona 2022 Awards in the categories of Environmental and Earth Sciences, Experimental Sciences and Technology and Life Sciences made their verdicts public on 29 January. The prizes are worth €9,500 and will be awarded on 15 February at a ceremony in the Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Hall.
Environmental and Earth Sciences
The jury, made up of Esther Garcés (president), Paula Bruna, Marina Monsonís, Santiago Giralt, and Valentí Sallarès, decided by majority to award the City of Barcelona Prize for Environmental and Earth Sciences to Pedro Cermeño and Carmen García-Comas, from the Institute of Marine Sciences CSIC, for their work Post-extinction recovery of the Phanerozoic oceans and biodiversity hotspots. This work proposes a paradigm shift in the knowledge of the evolution and recovery of marine biodiversity after the extinctions of the last 500 million years. The integration of different disciplines in a new conceptual model is particularly appreciated.
The jury also awarded a special mention to Aljoša Slameršak and Jorge Kallis, from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB), for their work Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition. The socio-economic and political implications and scientific commitment to the energy transition in the context of global change are assessed.
Experimental sciences and technology
The jury, made up of Sergi Jordà (president), Ulises Cortés, Oyidiya Oji, M. Pau Ginebra, and Pep Vidal, agreed by majority to award the City of Barcelona Prize for Experimental Sciences and Technology to Marta Villegas, principal investigator of the Life Sciences – Text Mining group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, for the construction and development of the natural language processing models for Catalan and Spanish, AINA and MarIA, respectively, which represent a decisive step in the preservation of the linguistic heritage of both languages in the internet space, as well as an advance in language technologies.
Life sciences
The jury, made up of Anna Janic (president), Jens Lüder, Elena Martínez-Fraiz, Guido Ramellini, and Irene Lapuente, agreed to award the City of Barcelona Prize for Life Sciences to Dr. Elvan Boke, for the work entitled Oocytes maintain ROS-free mitochondrial metabolism by suppressing complex I, published in the journal Nature, for her contribution to fundamental knowledge of cell biology and its impact on research into female fertility and which opens up new avenues of research in different fields. The jury also highlighted the originality and soundness of the research.
