The campus model established by the CEI UPF - Icària project stems from UPF's conviction that working to achieve a new sustainable economic model helps to increase social wellbeing, an objective that can be reached on the basis of two key missions.

Firstly, by integrating knowledge - illustrating the university's role as an agent for knowledge creation, transmission and transfer -, thus enabling the institution to act as a driving force for social transformation; and secondly, by fully integrating the UPF campus into its land setting - the expansion of which has lent and continues to lend a new lease of life to rundown areas in the city -, thus leading to UPF becoming a motor for transformation in the city.

Likewise, the project also focuses on three cross-disciplinary areas depicting the relations in which the University engages with local agents, along with the institution's system of internal governance: a host of strategic associates which lends added value to the project; a policy of alliances aiming at firmly establish the institution's position on the international stage, strengthening ties with a network of key partners that make it possible to execute robust, sustainable projects; and lastly, a framework for efficient management and governance, defined in the UPF25 Years strategy.