On 8 May, Barna Mezey, rector of the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest (Hungary) invested David Andreu, head of the Proteomics and Protein Chemistry Research Group of the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS) at UPF, doctor and professor honoris causa at a ceremony held in the main auditorium of the University.

David Andreu Martínez, professor of Chemistry at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS) at UPF since 2002, majored in chemistry of peptides and proteins with Nobel Prize-winner R.B. Merrifield at the Rockefeller University (USA) (1982-1985) and prior to his time at UPF was a tenured lecturer at the University of Barcelona (1985-2001).

Professor David Andreu's relationship with ELTE began in 1990, when along with scientists of the ELTE and of the University of Nottingham (UK), he co-led from the UB the first European Tempus project for cooperation in research and education involving a Hungarian university, soon after the country's political change.

This project, which has continued uninterrupted for 25 years, has enabled numerous scientific exchanges between Budapest and Barcelona (UB, and later UPF) and has been recognized as an important contributing factor in the integration of Hungarian science to the context of the European Union. Founded in 1635, the ELTE is the main Hungarian university with 28,200 students and 8 faculties, a teaching staff which provides 21% of the current members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the only Hungarian university among the top 200 in the University of Leiden ranking.

Another important point of convergence between the Hungarian university and David Andreu are their shared interests in the field of vaccines, an area in which both the group of professor David Andreu at UPF and various groups of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences hosted by the ELTE, have made significant and often complementary contributions.

The work done within the group led by David Andreu at UPF have been recognized recently by the Spanish Technology Platform for Animal Health. In 2014, this entity presented David Andreu and colleagues at the CSIC and the INIA with the Isabel Mínguez Tudela Award for Innovation in Animal Health for their work on a vaccine against FMD, the most economically devastating animal disease worldwide, and also by the UPF Board of Trustees, which in 2013 granted David Andreu the Knowledge Transfer Award for the same reason.