UPC researchers recognised with the ICREA award to boost research in the fields of energy, the environment and mathematics

11/03/2020

Smart computing systems with greater energy efficiency, smart power electronics that enables the mass integration of renewable energies in the electric system, the design of catalytic reactors and membrane reactors to produce hydrogen and the resolution of complex mathematical conjectures are research areas developed by four UPC researchers who have been recognised with the ICREA Academia award.

The UPC researchers Antonio González, Oriol Gomis, Jordi Llorca and Víctor Rotger have been recognised by ICREA Academia. The four researchers will receive a grant from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) to intensify excellent research in various fields.

Oriol Gomis, lecturer at the UPC Department of Electrical Engineering, has received an award in the field of engineering sciences. Gomis, who is a researcher at the Centre for Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Drives (CITCEA), will use the grant to study the challenges of mass electronic power penetration in the electric system, in the context of conversion of the sector and the need for mass integration of renewable energies.

CITCEA UPC is already working on various projects to study how to implement the functionality of creating a network via convertors and how to define and reconfigure protection in the electric network or understand the stability of the modern electronic network, considering the interactions between teams.

Antonio González, who received an award for the second time and Jordi Llorca for the third time, have been recognised in the category of engineering sciences. Antonio González leads the Microarchitecture and Compilers (ARCO) research group and his activity is focused on the area of robust, energy-efficient architectures for general purpose computers, graphics processors and cognitive computing systems.

Jordi Llorca is professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering, researcher at the Institute of Energy Technologies (INTE), director of the Barcelona Research Center in Multiscale Science and Engineering (CRnE) and head of the research group Nanoengineering of Materials Applied to Energy (NEMEN). He received an award for his research relating to the fundamental study and use of catalysts in the field of energy and the environment. He works on the design of catalytic reactors and membrane reactors to produce hydrogen, in the field of photochemistry to produce hydrogen from sunlight and in the design of new catalysts to eliminate atmospheric pollution and obtain synthetic fuels.

Víctor Rotger, researcher in the UPC Number Theory Research Group (TN), will use the award to investigate how to obtain new results on the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (one of seven millennial problems proposed by the Clay Mathematics Institute). The generalisation of this conjecture was proposed by Bloch and Kato within the Langlands programme and the Venkatesh conjectures (Medalla Fields 2018) on cohomology of the arithmetic varieties associated with algebraic groups. These projects are undertaken in collaboration with doctoral students from the UPC Department of Mathematics, researchers from the UPC Number Theory Research Group, researchers from the UB and UAB as well as the lecturers Henri Darmon from McGill University (Canada), Michael Harris from Columbia University in New York (United States) and Akshay Venkatesh from Princeton University (United States).  

About ICREA Academia

Since 2008, the ICREA Academia programme has promoted and awarded excellence in research at Catalan public universities. It contributes to promoting the work of researchers who are in an active, expansive phase of their research career. Those recognised with the ICREA Academia award receive a five-year research grant.