The ICREAs

ICREA research professors form a vibrant community of scientists and researchers in all areas of knowledge that contribute to the advancement of humankind by exploring, interpreting and questioning. Have a look and learn about their amazing discoveries and findings here:

Wagner, Peter

Universitat de Barcelona (UB)

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Wagner, Peter
Research Professor at
Universitat de Barcelona (UB)
Social & Behavioural Sciences
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Research interests

Peter Wagner's research is based in comparative historical and political sociology, social and political theory, and sociology of the social sciences. It focuses on the identification and comparative analysis of different forms of social and political modernity and of the historical trajectories of modern societies. In this perspective, the term "modernity" does not signal a single and unique model of social organization, but rather variable interpretations of basic human problématiques in the light of specific historical experiences. It was initially applied to a comparative political sociology of European societies, and subsequently to transformations in the self-understanding of Europe. Over the past few years, it was elaborated further towards a "world-sociology", focusing on the tensions between struggles for autonomy and persisting forms of domination and exploring current possibilities of progress in the light of historical experiences in different world-regions.

Key words
political sociology, social and political theory, comparative-historical sociology, European studies, sociology of the sciences
Wanner, Leo

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Wanner, Leo
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Humanities
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Research interests

Leo Wanner is working in the field of computational linguistics, teaching the computer to understand spoken and written natural language material, to supply people with information that might be useful to them and to interact with people. His research areas include human-computer interaction (in particular, the design and realization of conversation agents that reveal social and cultural competence), automatic written and spoken graph transduction-based language generation, automatic summarization of written material, data-driven parsing, information extraction, and, more recently, profiling of authors of written material and the information structure-prosody interface. He is furthermore interested in lexicology and lexicography, and there, in particular, in the automatic recognition, representation and use of lexical idiosyncrasies (so-called "collocations") by both native speakers and learners of a language. An important characteristics of his research is that it is multilingual.

Key words
computational linguistics, language generation, language analysis, summarization, lexicology, lexicography.
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. I am especially interested in issues of 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 current work focuses on how we should deal with the needs of the elderly and with variations in lifespan.

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

ORCID
: orcid.org/0000-0001-7907-8991
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
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.

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 research focuses in three areas each of which has generated several authored and edited books and journals special issues. These areas are political, social, and aesthetic Continental philosophy. I study each of these following the hermeneutic principle according to which Being is not an objective entity that philosophy must describe but rather the effect of interpretations. Following the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gianni Vattimo, and Richard Rorty, I emphasize the ontological and political nature of hermeneutics in order to demonstrate the danger of dogmatic beliefs for religious and political practices. The problems of education and emergency have been at the center of my research these past years in relation to politics, society, and art. My next books and essays will explore “fake news” and “post-truth” in this so-called age of alternative facts to argue, as Bruno Latour said, that "facts remain robust only when they are supported by a common culture, by institutions that can be trusted, by a more or less decent public life, by more or less reliable media.”

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