The ICREA Academia program was launched in 2008 with the aim of promoting and rewarding the excellence in research of professors at public universities in Catalonia. Thus, the program contributes to intensify the research carried out by university professors who are in a totally active and expansive phase of their research career. The awardees receive a research grant  over a period of five years. In this last edition of the program 30 grants have been awarded, from 224 applicants, of all areas of knowledge.

In total the UPF currently counts with 25 researchers that have received this award in different editions.  The ICREA Academia 2019 has been awarded to Xavier Serra and Davinia Hernández-Leo (Information and Communication Technologies), Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo (Health and Life Sciences), Alexandre Coello (Humanities), Aida Torres (Law), Mariano Torcal (Political and Social Sciences).

Xavier Serra had already obtained this award in the 2008 and 2013 calls. This new grant will allow him to dedicate more efforts to his research on the understanding of sound and music signals by combining signal processing and machine learning methods.

ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, is a foundation supported by the Catalan Government and guided by a Board of Trustees. ICREA was created in response to the need to seek new hiring formulas that would make it possible to compete with other research systems on a similar footing by focusing on hiring only the most talented and extraordinary scientists and academics.