UPF's Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) has been constantly working to obtain competive projects since 2007.
It is currently working on projects of excellence within the four specific research and innovation areas of the Framework Research Programmes (Cooperation, People, Ideas and Capacities), as well as the specific programme for the development of innovation and competitiveness, the Framework Programme for Innovation and Competitiveness (CIP).
This UPF department is obtaining competitive projects in all the categories of the European Research Area in its own right.
Interdisciplinarity is a distinguishing feature of the DTIC
The research done at the DTIC is organised in fifteen groups and covers a wide range of areas including networking, wireless communication, multimedia, image and sound processing, medical imaging, interactive technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, computational neurosciences and cognitive sciences, among others.
Participation in the 7th Framework Programme by grant category:
- Cooperation covers research projects entailing collaboration between several European organisations acting as a consortium, coordinated by one of the participating centres. The DTIC has twenty-four projects under way in this category, five of which are coordinated at UPF.
Also within the same category is the DTIC's participation in eight projects in the FET programme (Future Emerging Technologies) and within those, it is involved in five FET Proactive, two FET Open and 1 FET Flagship subprogrammes. The FET is a pioneering technological hothouse for new ideas and research areas that it promotes over the long term. Its mission is to foster high risk but innovative research, with a high level of technological and social impact. - In the People category, the Marie Curie actions in the 7th Framework Programme have been considerably enhanced by comparison with the previous Programme. This type of grant emphasises the promotion of human resources in research. The DTIC has three researchers in this area (Toni Ivorra, Ángel Lozano and Mireia Hernández) and is also a member of an Initial Training Network.
- The Ideas category seeks the best researchers able to undertake the best basic research in order to boost the dynamism and creativity of research and to attract talent from other European countries. It is structured based on the Starting Grant and Advanced Grant and UPF is the centre that has won most prizes in Spain. The DTIC has one Advanced researcher (Xavier Serra) and two Starting researchers (Albert Guillen, Salvador Soto).
- Finally, in the Capacities area, the aim is to increase research and innovation capacities throughout Europe in seven basic areas: research infrastructures, research benefiting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), support for regional associations in research, science and society, research and international cooperation policies. The DTIC is implementing an infrastructure and research project for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
The DTIC currently has two projects underway (Life 2.0 and Open Cities) in the Programme for Innovation and Competitiveness in research (CIP).