UB, UPC and UAB recognized as International Campuses of Excellence and awarded 31 million euros

Secretary General of Universities, Màrius Rubiralta, and Secretary General of Innovation, Juan Tomás Hernani, announced the results of the call for proposals for International Campuses of Excellence (CEI 2009), an initiative that awards 150 million euros in credit to help Spanish universities carry out their strategic modernization plans.

After the deliberations of an international board of experts, which heard presentations on the 18 strategic viability and conversion plans to become a CEI that passed the first phase of the call for proposals, nine projects coordinated by eleven universities have been recognized with the rating of CEI 2009. All 18 projects will receive funding.

Of the six Catalan universities that participated in the call for proposals, three were recognized as campuses of excellence and awarded 31 million euros in loans to carry out their plans and become some of the top universities in Europe by 2015. The schools selected are the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), for their joint project Barcelona Knowledge Campus, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), for their project UAB CEI: Dedication to Knowledge and Innovation.

Four additional projects coordinated by the universities of Cordoba, Cantabria, Oviedo and Santiago de Compostela were recognized with the rating of regional CEI 2009, for their potential to reach a level of excellence on a regional level once they have carried out their project.

Finally, nine additional projects have been granted the rating of Potential CEI Project, and are encouraged to continue working to reach the necessary level of international excellence at the end of the project. Three universities in Catalonia were granted this status: the University of Rovira i Virgili (URV), for their Southern Catalonia International Excellence Campus (4 million euros); the University of Ramon Llull (URL), for their project Aristos: Passion for Excellence (2 million euros); and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), for their UPF Icaria International Campus (4 million euros).

Photograph (from left to right): Juan Tomás Hernani and Màrius Rubiralta.