Gemma Barberà has received an honorable mention at the Ràdio Associació 2026 Awards for SignarIA, a pioneering UPF tool developed with Sorensen that enables deaf signers to participate directly on the radio using a personalized synthetic voice without having to give up their own language (Catalan Sign Language). The project arose from a specific need: the first deaf student in the 34‑year history of UPF's Journalism degree faced challenges in a radio‑focused course. Faced with this need, researchers and professors of the Journalism Degree Marcel Mauri and Roger Cassany of the Research Group on Political Communication, Journalism and Democracy (POLCOM-GRP) took up the challenge. They formed a team with Xavi Vinaixa and Inés Broto (responsible for technological development), Gemma Barberà (researcher and Serra Húnter associate professor of the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, senior researcher at the Catalan Sign Language Laboratory and the Formal Linguistics Group), Santiago Frigola (collaborator), and Cecilia Barba (project coordinator). 

Congratulations Gemma!