The Barcelona City Council and the ”la Caixa” Foundation have today presented the research and innovation projects that will receive grants from the 2023 call, endowed with €2 million to be distributed among all the awardees.

Among the awarded projects is the "Microcosmos BCN" project, awarded to University of Pompeu Fabra which will be led by the UPF professor and ICREA researcher who leads the Complex Systems laboratory of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF), Ricard Solé, with the collaboration of the University of Alicante and the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona.

The fourteen subsidized projects provide innovative solutions to urban challenges: community health, sustainability, and climate change. Research teams have 18 months to develop their projects.

The award ceremony took place in the Hall of Chronicles 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.

Microcosmos BCN: a project for the improvement of Barcelona's soil biodiversity

The "Microcosmos BCN" project will form a research tool to explore different scenarios of global warming and bioremediation in urban soils, making local ecosystems more resilient to climate change. Additionally, it will contribute to a new experimental and scientific outreach facility at the Museum of Natural Sciences, as part of the Citadel of Knowledge initiative.