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The BSE is presented with the accreditation for excellence from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
In October 2015, the BSE was selected to receive its second Severo Ochoa Research Excellence Distinction from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and this week, the school was officially presented with the award. The award provides funding to top research centers in order to promote frontier research and distinguish institutes that are producing excellent academic research.
The award ceremony was held by the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness at their head office in Madrid. In attendance were the eleven centers who have been selected for the award. The Severo Ochoa award is the largest institutional recognition for scientific research in Spain. Each of the selected centres have been awarded four million Euros over the space of four years and the BSE is the first centre for social sciences to be awarded with a distinction.
Prof. Teresa Garcia-Milà, Director of the BSE, was officially presented with the award at the ceremony in Madrid. In her acceptance speech, Prof. Garcia-Milà thanked the researchers at BSE who made everything possible as well as the management team involved in organising the application. She also thanked the Secretary of State and all of his team for organising such an award for excellent programs during challenging economic times. She continued by saying that the first time the BSE was awarded with distinction of the Severo Ochoa, the school was very motivated to become the first center for social sciences to win the award. Once this was achieved in 2011, the motivation for achieving the award a second time around, was to help the BSE continue on the path to excellence and undertake new initiatives that will position the school in a stronger, highly competitive international context.
The following centres have also received the award this year and were in attendance at the ceremony:
Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas
Centre de Recerca en Agrigenomica
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
Instituto de Ciencias Fotónicas
Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas
Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona
IRB Barcelona
The funding received from obtaining this award will be used to build on research initiatives that have reinforced the School’s position as a global leader in research.