On 16 January, the first meeting of the ECUVal European project was held. The aim of the project is to develop a system free from chemical reagents that can address the problem of effluents with high concentrations of dyes and salts. This is to be achieved through an electrochemical system, combined with UV irradiation, to treat and reuse wastewater from dyes and dye washes. The system should save between 70 and 100% of the water used in textile dyes. Innotex Center / Intexter is the project coordinator, and three other partners are involved: Fitex, Icomatex SA and Grau SA. The total budget is 1.4 million euros and the project will take 30 months.

InLab FIB UPC has developed a tool to help in decision-making to extinguish forest fires. A GIS platform that provides real-time information on relevant factors (the fire service, air and land resources) and a multi-criteria optimization algorithm are used to optimize all available fire extinction resources. The project incorporates geospatial information on road networks, tracks and a 3D model of the land. In addition, it brings together information from different sources to feed into the simulator and optimizer. The project, called FireFIGHT, has been funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The Center for Language and Speech Technologies and Applications (TALP UPC) has completed its participation in the X-Like European project. During this project, new technology has been developed to monitor and aggregate knowledge that is spread across the media and social networks, and inter-linguistic services have been developed for publishers, media monitoring or extracting relevant information for financial or commercial purposes. The technology is based on text analysis to create an independent sematic representation of the original language. Data mining techniques are then used to make the information accessible to publishers, for business intelligence and for media monitoring. The project focused on the major world languages of English, German, Spanish and Chinese, and the minority languages of Catalan, Slovenian and Croatian.

The UPC and CIT UPC are working actively to promote and boost participation in various Communities proposals promoted by the Generalitat de Catalunya and ACCIÓ, as part of the European Commission’s Research & Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization. The work involves different entities in very different areas, including sustainable mobility, smart cities, health and future factories. The goal is to generate ideas and develop projects that involve business-university collaboration in each of the areas in which we have technological capacities and expert researchers. We are working proactively to participate in this new European regional development strategy.

In order to better meet the needs of businesses and their professionals, CIT UPC and its Member Centers have launched a new area of activity: lifelong training programmes on specialized areas of technology, based on the University’s knowledge and on its experience in industrial project development. The programme is open throughout the year, and tailor-made courses are available for companies. Training has begun with 15 programmes in 4 technology areas: production, energy and the environment, materials and food technologies. Find out more about the opportunities. Further information.

PhD. Manel Medina, founder of the Security Team for the Coordination of Emergencies in Telecommunication Networks (esCert), member of InLab FIB UPC, member of the Advisory Council of ISMS-Forum Sapin, former sub-director of the technical department of the European Union Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) and chairman of the Scientific Committee of APWG.EU, is the Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the Tenth Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime 2015), which will be held on 26 and 29 May in Barcelona.

The latest advances in combating cybercrime will be reviewed in the symposium’s theoretical and practical sessions and by security professionals. The legal changes required to combat the problem effectively will also be examined, and the main topic will be mobile device security. Papers can be submitted up to 30 January.

On 22 January, the 2015 call for the Retos-Colaboración programme was announced as part of the Spanish Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016. The aim of the call is to support cooperation projects involving companies and research organizations, to promote the launch of new products and services on the market. The total budget allocation is €83.9 M in subsidies (39% higher than in 2014) and €490 M in advance payments and repayable loans.

According to definitive data from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), Spanish R&D spending in 2013 was 13.012 billion euros in 2013, which was 2.8% lower than in 2012. The figures are similar to those of 2012. Spending was 1.24% of GDP (1.27 in 2012). The drop was greatest in public administration (4.7%), followed by higher education (1.8%), and was lower in the business sector (2.6%).

The Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRi) has developed Funds for Science, a a search system that can be used to access information on funding for research projects and science-based companies, designed particularly for researchers and businesses. The system has a web search engine that includes 600 resources and covers calls involving public and private funding. Searches can be made according to the type of call, the area of knowledge and the source of funding.

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has published the Summary Report on Innovation Union Progress in Spain 2014. Challenges for the future include: continuing to invest in knowledge, the implementation of legislation on science and technology, the creation of a state research agency and improvement of incentives to increase mobility between the public and private sectors.