Els ICREA

Els professors d'investigació ICREA formen una comunitat dinàmica de científics i investigadors de totes les àrees del coneixement, que contribueixen al progrés de la humanitat amb els seus estudis, interpretacions i preguntes. Entreu i descobriu-ne els increïbles descobriments i troballes:

Williams, Andrew

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Williams, Andrew
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Humanities
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Research interests

My interests lie in moral and political philosophy and practical rationality, as well as intersecting areas in economics and political science. My research focuses in particular on questions about distributive justice, including ones arising across states and generations. I explore how egalitarian distributive principles should guide the design of social institutions that shape the prospects of children, parents, the elderly, and future generations. My most recent work examines how policy makers should deal with gender wage gaps and lifespan variations as well as the role that demographic factors should play in our response to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key words
Political Philosophy, Ethics, Rational Action, Distributive Justice, International Ethics, Intergenerational Ethics, Demographic Change, Population Aging, Climate Change, Liberalism, Political Authority, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin

ORCID
: orcid.org/0000-0001-7907-8991
Wiltschko, Martina E.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Wiltschko, Martina E.
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Humanities
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Research interests

My research explores the fundamental building blocks of human language, how languages differ in their realization, as well as how these building blocks relate to more general cognitive capacities. My empirical emphasis over the past 10 years has been the language found exclusively in interaction: i.e., aspects of language that serve to regulate the construction of common ground among interlocutors on the one hand and the dialogical interaction itself (e.g., turn-taking). I explore how interactional language compares with propositional language (i.e., the language of reference which allows for the construction of thought). My research clearly reveals that interactional language is as much part of our human-specific capacity for language as propositional language is. This suggests that language is equally important for the configration of thought as it is for the configuration of conversational interaction. Significantly, this finding helps to answer a classic question that has divided linguists for centuries: language is an instrument for thought AND for communication. As such, interactional language is a unique and ideal window into the tacit and human-specific knowledge which defines our capacity for language both as an instrument for thought and a tool for communication. To this end, I now explore interactional language from a variety of different angles. i) its acquisition and how it relates to the acquisition of propositional language; ii) its use in populations with neuro-diverse profiles (aphasia, autism, etc.); iii) its relation and place in the architecture of the human mind (relation to theory of mind, construction of emotions, etc.); iv) its role in human-machine interaction. Thus, my research links to neighboring fields, including philosophy (referential semantics, pragmatics), sociology (conversation analysis), and psychology (theory of mind), and artificial intelligence.

Key words
theoretical syntax, syntax-pragmatics interface, language variation, field-work, categories, language of interaction, discourse markers

ORCID
: 0000-0003-4647-3033
Winter, Andreas

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

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Winter, Andreas
Research Professor at
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
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Research interests

I work on quantum information, especially quantum Shannon theory, which aims at incorporating information-theoretic ideas into physics. The Shannon theoretic approach has succeeded in quantifying entanglement as a resource in information processing task, and likewise for other properties of quantum systems such as channel and storage capacities of quantum systems. One of my favourite topics is the interplay between classical and quantum information, evident in the intricate structure of local operations in composite systems, such as data hiding or "information locking". I also work on additivity and non-additivity of quantum channel capacities, quantum data compression, and zero-error quantum communication. Further interests include statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, resource theories, entropy characterization and entanglement measures. But at heart I am a mathematician and will still get fascinated by classic problems: existence of Hadamard matrices, incompleteness, ...

Key words
quantum information, quantum theory, discrete mathematics, probability

ORCID
: orcid.org/0000-0001-6344-4870

RESEARCHER ID
: C-4185-2016
Wulzer, Andrea

Institut de Física d'Altes Energies (IFAE)

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Wulzer, Andrea
Research Professor at
Institut de Física d'Altes Energies (IFAE)
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
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Research interests

I am a particle physicist. My mission is to unveil the microscopic laws that govern the fundamental particles and their interactions. I study what these laws could be, and how they manifest as concrete predictions for a multitude of experimental measurements that are being and will be performed at particle colliders. Devising strategies to extract maximal information on fundamental physics laws from the data collected at the Large Hadron Collider is a main focus of my research. Another goal is to identify new pathways for further progress at ambitious future collider projects and in particular at a muon collider of very high energy. I attack these questions by employing and developing theoretical tools for predictions based on the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and special relativity, combined in what is known as "Quantum Field Theory", as well as statistical tools for comparing the predictions with the experimental data.

Key words
Beyond the Standard Model Theory and Phenomenology; Collider Physics;

ORCID
: 0000-0002-4523-1940

RESEARCHER ID
: GIK-5322-2022
Yaroshchuk, Andriy

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)

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Yaroshchuk, Andriy
Research Professor at
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
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Research interests

The keyword is behaviour of fluids at nano-scale. I study the transfer of ions and water molecules through nano-metric (tens of nanometers) barrier layers of composite nanofiltration membranes. Another example is the transfer of ions and water through nano-porous track-etched membranes having identical cylindrical pores. I also study processes of current-induced concentration polarization of nano-/micro-interfaces where concentration polarization is strongly-coupled to electroosmosis and fine separation of solutes like peptides can occur. Recently, I discovered that a layered structure consisting of a micro-perforated ion-exchange membrane and a nanoporous layer can have very interesting properties useful for AC electroosmotic pumping . Another topic is experimental and theoretical studies of ion transfer across polyelectrolyte multilayers where we have recently discovered very high (>1000) selectivities in the electrically-driven transfer of ions of different charge magnitudes.The most recent research topic is energy harvesting from water evaporation. It has been suggested that the area of contact between nanoporous electrodes and electrolyte solutions can be effectively controlled via solvent (water) evaporation. This opens new opportunities for energy harvesting from waste heat in coupled wetting/drying and charging/discharging cycles with nanoporous electrodes. This emerging process is critically controlled by the ion dynamics in ultrathin water films staying behind receding menisci, which reveals itself as almost completely unexplored and as a focal point of a new branch of electrochemistry, namely that of partially wet electrodes.

Key words
nanofluidics, electrokinetics, electrochemistry, membrane, nanofiltration, colloid

ORCID
: 0000-0002-6364-6840

RESEARCHER ID
: L-5955-2014
Zabala, Santiago

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Zabala, Santiago
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Humanities
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Research interests

My books, articles, and research focus on the meaning of art, politics, and freedom in the twenty-first century where, as I claim, "the greatest emergency has become the absence of emergency." The goal of philosophy is to thrust us into these absent emergencies (such as climate change or economic inequality) in order to disrupt the ongoing “return to order” that surveillance capitalism and right-wing populism are imposing upon us. These problems are discussed in my most recent book—Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020 - translated into Spanish and Italian) —and in many articles.

Key words
Philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and political philosophy

ORCID
: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1780-4588

RESEARCHER ID
: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/L-2327-2017