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:

Cabré Vilagut, Xavier

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)

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Cabré Vilagut, Xavier
Research Professor at
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
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Research interests

My research field is the mathematical analysis of Partial Differential Equations. These equations arise in mathematical physics, differential geometry, finance, and biology. My focus is on elliptic and parabolic equations, and on the analytical understanding of the regularity, symmetry, and other qualitative properties of their solutions. This often involves the use of geometric tools such as isoperimetric inequalities, whose study is an important part of my research. My main current project concerns a recently flourishing area: reaction problems for fractional diffusions associated to jump or Lévy processes. These are the so called 'anomalous diffusions', well noticed in the last decades in some reaction and biological fronts, as well as in mathematical finance.

Key words
Partial differential equations, reaction-diffusion problems, fractional diffusions, isoperimetric and Sobolev inequalities

ORCID
: 0000-0001-5682-3135

RESEARCHER ID
: L-2727-2014
Cáceres Aguilar, Mario

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

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Cáceres Aguilar, Mario
Research Professor at
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
Life & Medical Sciences
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Research interests

The genomic revolution has unveiled extraordinary possibilities unthought-of before. In particular, we are interested in understanding genomic structural variation and gene-expression changes, and how they relate to individual and species differences. To address these questions, we use humans as a model and take a multidisciplinary approach that combines experimental and bioinformatic analysis of the great wealth of data available, generating results of interest to many diverse fields. Our main line of research is the global analysis of polymorphic inversions in the human genome, which aims to investigate the biological significance of one of the less known types of variants in humans. This ranges from the development of new methods for inversion study and the first database of human polymorphic inversions, to the characterization of their population distribution, functional effects and selection signatures, as a way to ultimately determine their contribution to complex traits.

Key words
Genetics, Genomics, Human, Evolution, Structural variants, Gene expression

ORCID
: 0000-0002-7736-3251

RESEARCHER ID
: A-6379-2009
Calsamiglia Costa, Caterina

Institute for Political Economy and Governance (IPEG)

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Calsamiglia Costa, Caterina
Research Professor at
Institute for Political Economy and Governance (IPEG)
Social & Behavioural Sciences
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Research interests

Her research focuses on Public Economics with an emphasis on school choice, educational policies, affirmative action, measurement of non-cognitive skills and welfare economics in general. Her work includes theoretical, experimental and empirical analysis. She is currently working very closely with the education sector, promoting the implementation and evaluation of rigurous formative assessment tools for socioemotional learning in primary, secondary, vocational training and college worldwide.

Key words
Education, Data, Theory, Mechanism Design, School Choice, Non cognitive measurements

ORCID
: 0000-0003-2079-7179

RESEARCHER ID
: K-4009-2014
Casal Ribas, Paula

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Casal Ribas, Paula
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Humanities
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Research interests

My main field is distributive justice, which is a part of political philosophy that examines how social institutions should distribute benefits and burdens within a family or a nation-state, or across countries or generations. This requires assessing general principles (including equality, priority, and sufficiency) as well as policy responses (such as taxation and public spending proposals) to specific problems like gender inequality, local and global poverty or climate change. I have written from a biologically-informed perspective about gender, nonhuman animals, personhood and the distinction between natural and social inequality. I have also written about more specific issues, such as how to distribute the costs of child-rearing, the right to sea-access for landlocked states, the moral limits on religious and cultural accommodation, xenotransplantation and the Non-Identity Problem, and the distinction medical ethicists draw between therapy and enhancement.

Key words
National and international distributive justice, future generations, climate change, environmental taxes, animal ethics, evolutionary biology, gender, multiculturalism, and enhancement.

ORCID
: orcid.org/0000-0002-9227-6025

RESEARCHER ID
: F-6525-2016
Castillo Ocaranza, Carlos

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

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Castillo Ocaranza, Carlos
Research Professor at
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Engineering Sciences
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Research interests

The focus of my research is algorithmic fairness. Currently, I work on automated risk assessment methods that satisfy algorithmic fairness criteria, such as separability and sufficiency, validating them through interdisciplinary research in various applied settings. I also work on algorithms for fair recommendation and fair search, seeking to give similar items similar exposure, as well as trying to steer people away from false or misleading information or harmful content.

Key words
Algorithmic Fairness, Social Computing

ORCID
: 0000-0003-4544-0416

RESEARCHER ID
: E-4752-2016
Catalán Bernabé, Gustau

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2)

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Catalán Bernabé, Gustau
Research Professor at
Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2)
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
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Research interests

A common denominator of my work is the search for emerging physical phenomena at the nanoscale. Much of my better-known research concerns the coupling between electrical polarization and strain gradients (a phenomenon known as flexoelectricity) which happens to be very large at the nanoscale. Over the last decade, and with the help of an European Research Council (ERC) grant, I set up in Barcelona one of the world's first specialized laboratories specifically dedicated to this phenomenon (there are a number of them now). Prominent discoveries in this area from our group have been the large flexoelectricity of semiconductors, the existence (and important physiological role) of flexoelectricity in bones, and the identification of the participation of flexoelectricity in fracture physics. In parallel, I have also worked on other nanoscale phenomena in oxides: metal-insulator transitions, the physics of domain walls, antiferroelectricity and photovoltaic effects of polar materials.

Key words
ferroelectricity, flexoelectricity, piezoelectricity, domain walls, perovskite oxides, metal-insulator transitions, thin films.

ORCID
: 0000-0003-0214-4828

RESEARCHER ID
: D-3233-2015