The Catalan Foundation of Support to Research starts a new phase with new areas of activities

BY BIOCAT

The Catalan Foundation of Support to Research —former Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation and former Talència— has celebrated the meeting of trustees (20/6/2011) and the new areas of activities which will have from now.

The Foundation was established in 1986. It assumes as main mission to improve the social knowledge of science, through research divulging, and will look for new cooperative ways between public and private sectors in scientific research activities in Catalonia.

Thus, the entity will facilitate and will implement activities of scientific divulging in Catalonia addressed to society and, especially, to young people, fostering scientific vocations and visualizing socially the results and scope of research. In the area of cooperation between public and private sectors research activities, it will promote funding for private R+D+i, public-private partnership research activities, mixed investment funds for research, and will encourage new altruistic funding or donations to promote research.

At present, the Foundation is presided over by Andreu Mas-Colell, Catalan Minister Minister of Economy and Knowledge. Its director is Pere Pardo. First Vice President is Lluís Deulofeu, executive director at La Caixa; and as a second vice president, Josep M. Martorell, general director of Research at the Generalitat of Catalonia. Its secretary is Xavier Queralt, BBVA territorial director in Catalonia. Other 18 members from the administration, business world and scientific research complete the board of trustees.

In the next weeks, after the Institution first board of trustees and once the Generalitat of Catalonia has rejected Talència —brand under which the entity had been acting in 2010— the organization will start a recovery process of its private nature, will choose a new president who does not belong to the administration and will build a new management team.