The Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) was formally founded in July 2008, as a joint Institute of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

Its general mission is to promote knowledge and research excellence in evolutionary biology. The basis of the IBE, and its main peculiarity, is to address biodiversity studies describing functional and evolutionary genomics at all levels of observation: molecular, biochemical, physiological, and morphological.

The IBE is the only research centre in Catalonia and Spain which completely devotes its research to evolutionary biology, and it is currently a reference in Southern Europe. 

Nowadays, IBE activity involves more than 130 people and 23 research groups distributed in 5 scientific programs related to Evolutionary Biology research.