Agenda 2030

Alicia Adserà

PhD in Economics from Boston University. She is currently a lecturer at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (USA) and a researcher at IZA and CreAM. She has been a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a member of the University of Chicago's Population Research Center. Her main fields of research are centred on the role of economic conditions in fertility-related decisions, as well as migratory flows, with a particular focus on matters such as language and the labour market. She has published work in the American Economic Review P&P, Economic Journal, Labor Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Law Economics and Organization, and Population Studies, among other publications.

Alícia Casals

PhD in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). She is currently Full Professor of the Department of Systems Engineering, Automation and Industrial Computing at the UPC, and has been Chair of its Science and Technology Division since 2019. She has been a member of the Institute for Catalan Studies and has chaired various experimental robotics conferences. She was previously Vice Chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2008-2009) and Chair of the Technical Committee on Biorobotics of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2016-2017). She co-founded the UPC-IBEC spin-off Rob Surgical Systems (2012) for the development of a robotic system for laparoscopy, and another UPC-IBEC spin-off Surgitrainer (2015) for the development of surgical training staff. She has been awarded the Most Social Invention Award by Mundo Electrónico (1987), the Barcelona 92 International Technology Award (1992), the City of Barcelona Award (1996) and the Narcís Monturiol Medal for Scientific and Technological Merit awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya (1998).

Andreu Mas-Colell

PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota (1972). He is currently the Chairman of BIST. He has been Full Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1981-96), Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1972-80), and Chairman of the Barcelona School of Economics (2006-2010). He has been the Catalan Minister for Universities, Research and the Information Society (2000-2003) and Economy and Knowledge (2010-2016). He was Secretary General of the European Research Council (ERC) from July 2009 to August 2010. He was elected member of the Institute for Catalan Studies in 2005, and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 2008. He has been a member of the "la Caixa" Education Service Advisory Board, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo, and a member of the Board of the Cercle d'Economia. His main research topics are microeconomics and game theory, as well as the research system itself and higher education.

Angel Castiñeira

PhD in Philosophy and Educational Sciences from the University of Barcelona. He has been a member of ESADE’s teaching staff since 1993. He has been the Director of the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE-URL, Associate Professor of the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE-URL, and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Studies of the Generalitat de Catalunya, as well as Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at Ramon Llull University, editor of the "Temes Contemporanis" collection published by the Proa publishing house, and editor of the journal IDEES. Revista de Temes Contemporanis. His main research topics are social and political philosophy (including theories of justice and the welfare state, multiculturalism and nationalism), applied ethics and values, changes to the social and cultural environment, and democratic governance and leadership.

Anton Costas

PhD in Economic Policy from the University of Barcelona. He is currently the Chairman of the Cercle d'Economia. He has chaired and been a member of various expert committees for the provision of public policy advice to governments. He is actively involved in the public debate about current economic problems by writing articles and taking part in conferences. He is a columnist for the El País, El Periódico de Catalunya and La Vanguardia newspapers. As regards the world of business, he sits on the board of several companies. He has been customer ombudsman for Endesa (2000-2005) and chairman of the Board of Endesa in Catalonia (2005-2012). His studies focus on public policy formation processes, with particular emphasis on those relating to economic reform. He has been Vice-Rector of Menéndez Pelayo International University and the University of Barcelona.

Carles Ramió

PhD in Political and Administrative Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is currently Full Professor of Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University, as well as Vice-Rector of Institutional Planning and Evaluation since 2013. He has been Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Public Management at Pompeu Fabra University, Vice-Rector at that university three times, Director of the Public Administration School of Catalonia, chairman of Ivàlua (Catalan Consortium for the Evaluation of Public Policies) and vice-chairman of the Centre d'Estudis Jurídics i Formació Especialitzada de Catalunya. His main research topics are public management and administration (theory of organisation and operational auditing), public-private partnerships and citizen participation. He has published 22 books about institutions, in addition to around 170 articles and book chapters.

Enric Banda

PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona. He is currently a senior advisor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, a strategic advisor at the Leitat Technology Centre, and Chairman of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Board of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Previous responsibilities include, among others, Secretary of State for Universities and Research, CEO of the European Science Foundation, Director of the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRi) and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), as well as Science Director of the "la Caixa" Foundation.

Elisabet Viladecans

PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona (1999). She is currently a researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB), where she leads the research programme "Ciutats". She is also the Director of the City of Barcelona UB Chair in Urban Economics and a researcher at CEMFI, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and CESifo. Her main research topics are the economics of agglomeration and location of people and companies, the impact of infrastructure on the growth of cities, urban congestion and pollution, the effectiveness of urban policies, the regulation of land use and the growth of cities, the political economy of coastal destruction, and the impact of social interactions on people's choice of residence.

Estanislao Roca

PhD in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is currently a Professor of the Doctoral Programme in Urbanism of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, which has been awarded a Mention of Excellence. In addition, he has been an international teaching assessor since 2015. He has been awarded the University Teaching Quality Award by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (2011) and the Jaume Vicens Vives distinction. He has been Director of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia's Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DUOT). He was awarded the Europa Nostra Medal of Honour in 1995, followed by the Lluís Domènech i Muntaner triennial research award in 1996.

Francisco Longo

Professor at the ESADE Centre for Public Governance. He has been Director of the Centre for Public Governance, as well as Deputy Managing Director and Secretary General of ESADE. He has been a member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (2011-2018) as well as of other expert committees for the reform of public work, university governance and the organisation of the public sector. He sits on various editorial boards and has written countless publications on governance, public management and public-private partnerships.

Guillem Lopez Casanovas

PhD in Public Economics from the University of York (1984). He is currently Full Professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University. He was also Vice-Rector for Economics and International Relations and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the same university from 2000 to 2004. In 1996 he founded the Centre for Research in Health and Economics (CRES-UPF) together with Vicente Ortún, and he headed it until 2006. He was an independent Director of the Bank of Spain's Governing Council from 2005 to 2017. He was Chairman of the International Health Economics Association (IHEA) from 2007 to 2011, and in 2016 he was elected full member of the Philosophy and Social Sciences section of the Institute for Catalan Studies. He has been an expert advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the field of health inequalities in the European Union. His main research topics are measuring the efficiency of the public sector, reviewing the role of the public sector in general (and the health sector in particular), fiscal balance, the funding of local treasuries, health economics, dependency, and intergenerational balance.

Hanna Abdullah

PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics (LSE). She is currently the leading researcher of the CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) Global Cities programme, as well as a collaborating researcher at the Centre for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society (CECUPS) of the University of Barcelona. She has been curator of cultural programmes at the Goethe-Institut New York (German Institute of Culture), where she developed and ran programmes on architecture and urban planning, among others. Her main research topics focus on the diplomacy of cities in the fields of climate change and culture, with a particular focus on Europe and the Mediterranean.

Isabel Pont Castejón

PhD in Law and Tenured Lecturer of Administrative Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is currently a representative of the Spanish Environmental Law Association in Catalonia, as well as a member of the Scientific Committee of the journal Aranzadi Medio Ambiente, the Animal and Human Testing Ethics Committee, the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology's (CTA) Research Committee, and the Technical and Maritime Committee, Spanish Port Environmental Forum. She has been a member of the Advisory Board for Sustainable Development of the Generalitat de Catalunya since 2005. She has been a legal adviser of the Barcelona Port Authority, as well as a member and Secretary of the Joint Committee on Environmental Control and Monitoring for the Port of Barcelona's extension works from 1997 to 2011. She has been the leading researcher in European research projects.

José Luís Martí

PhD in Political and Social Theory (2004), and Bachelor's Degree in Law (1997), from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is currently Tenured Lecturer of Philosophy of Law at Pompeu Fabra University as well as Vice-Rector of Innovation Projects and director of the planetary welfare project at the same university. He also edits the journal Law, Ethics and Philosophy (LEAP) and has been a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University (2008-2009) and Visiting Professor at the University of Richmond (2014). He has published several books and articles on democratic theory, new technology and global governance.

Leire Pajin

Director of International Development at ISGlobal and Chair of the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development (REDS). She was Special Advisor to the Pan American Health Organization and Political Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the planning of the post-2015 Development Agenda between 2012 and 2014. She has been Spanish Minister of Health, Social Policy and Equality, as well as Secretary of State for Cooperation and President of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), which approved the Spanish Master Plan for Cooperation (2005-2008) under her leadership.

Lluis Torner

PhD in Physical Sciences from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is currently the Director of the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). He has received various distinctions including the Generalitat de Catalunya's Young Researcher Distinction (2000), the Monturiol Medal (2009), the Optical Society of America's global Leadership Award (2011), the Generalitat de Catalunya's National Research Award (2016) and the Nature Mentoring Award (2017). His research focuses primarily on photonics, with particular emphasis on optical solitons.

Maria Soledad Garcia Cabeza

PhD in Philosophy from the University of Hull (1984), and PhD in Geography and History from the University of Barcelona (1985). She is currently director of doctoral theses and master's degrees in the fields of citizenship, social inclusion policies, social innovation and multilevel governance. She has been Chair of Research Committee 21 (in relation to the sociology of urban and regional development) of the International Sociological Association (ISA), a researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Amsterdam and Bielefeld University, among others.

Mariano Marzo

PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Barcelona (1980). He is currently a Professor at the University of Barcelona, where he teaches Energy Resources and Petroleum Geology. He has sat on the editorial boards of several prestigious international journals, such as Basin Research, Geology and Sedimentology, among others. He has carried out his research under the University of Barcelona's Geomodel Research Institute since 2005. He has published over 150 articles in scientific journals.

Marina Subirats

PhD in Sociology from the University of Barcelona, and honorary PhD from Rovira i Virgili University. She is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She has been Director of the Women's Institute (1993-1996) and held a number of positions at Barcelona City Council: Councillor for Education (1999-2006), Chair of Sants-Montjuïc District Council (1999- 2003), Chair of Nou Barris District Council (2003-2006), and Fifth Deputy Mayor (2003-2006). Her primary areas of research are education and gender equality.

Marta Estrada

PhD in Biology from the University of Barcelona (1976). She currently leads the Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography of the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She has published many articles in specialist international journals, as well as books and book chapters on oceanography. She has taken part in conferences and congresses, supervised several doctoral theses and post-doctoral researchers, and lectured at the University of Barcelona, ​​the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Menéndez Pelayo International University. She has been a member of the editorial board of Scientia Marina since 1989.

Núria Mas

PhD in Economics from Harvard University, specialising in health economics. She is currently the Director of the Department of Economics at IESE Business School and a Bank of Spain Board member. She has been a member of the Generalitat de Catalunya's Advisory Committee for the Sustainability and Progress of the Health System. She has published work in academic journals such as, among others, the Journal of Health Economics, The Review of Industrial Organization, Food Policy and the International Journal of Healthcare Finance and Economics.

Oriol Nel·lo

PhD in Geography from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is currently a full member of the Institute for Catalan Studies and a lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In recent years he has imparted lectures at universities in Brazil, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Mexico, Portugal and Chile. He has been an MP in the Catalan Parliament (1999-2003) and Secretary for Territorial Planning of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2003–2011). His main research topics revolve around territorial dynamics and territorial planning policies, land management, urban rehabilitation and landscape.

Pedro Díez

PhD in Civil Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (1996). He is currently the Director of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Computational Mechanics programme and has been part of the scientific board of the Euro-Mediterranean University in Fez (Morocco) since 2013. He is also Vice President of ECCOMAS (European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences). He was Vice-Rector for International Policy at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia from 2010 to 2013 and Deputy Director of the Department of Applied Mathematics III (2004-2007), as well as of the Escola de Camins (the UPC's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering), from 1997 to 2000. He has received several accolades, such as the Fellow Distinction awarded by the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) in 2010.

Quim Brugué

Doctor in Political and Administrative Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Girona (UdG). He has been Director General for Citizen Participation at the Generalitat de Catalunya, Director of the Institute of Government and Public Policy, and Chairman of the Spanish Association of Political Science and Public Administration (AECPA). He was the Director of the Institute for Government and Public Policy (IGOP) from 2009 to 2014. In addition, he was Chairman of the Spanish Association of Political Science and Public Administration (AECPA) from 2015 to 2017.

Rafael Vilasanjuan

Journalist. He is currently the Director of the Global Analysis and Development Department of ISGlobal. He has been Deputy Managing Director of the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture (CCCB) (2006 to 2011) and worked at MSF International for over 10 years. He has also taken part in observation missions with the Democratic National Institute (NDI) to monitor electoral processes in the Middle East.

Ricard Espelt

PhD in the Information and Knowledge Society from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). He is currently a researcher at Dimmons (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute – Open University of Catalonia (UOC)). His research has focused on the economic and social impact of digital platforms, and his thesis has focused on agroecological consumption cooperatives.

Tamyko Ysa

PhD in Political and Administrative Sciences. She is currently a Full Professor of Strategy and Public Management at ESADE and a Full Professor at Ramon Llull University. Furthermore, she is the leading researcher in the consolidated research group on Leadership and Innovation in Public Management and manages research grants under the European programmes (H2020 and the Framework Programme) and the Spanish National R&D Plan. She has published articles in the Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory, Public Management Review, International Public Management Journal, Public Administration Review and the International Journal of Public Sector Management, as well as for Oxford University Press, Routledge, Edward Elgar, Palgrave MacMillan and Emerald.

Teresa Garcia-Milà

PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota. She is currently the Director of the Barcelona School of Economics, as well as an associate researcher at the Centre for Research in International Economics (CREI). She is a director of Banc Sabadell, sits on the Advisory Board of the Independent Authority for Spanish Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), and is Vice Chair of the Cercle d'Economia and of Barcelona Global. She has been Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business of Pompeu Fabra University, as well as Vice-Rector of Science Policy and Director of the Department of Economics and Business at the same university. Her main research topics are macroeconomics, public economics and regional economics.

Teresa Puig

PhD in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is currently an executive member of the editorial board of the journal Superconducting Science and Technology, as well as a European Society of Applied Superconductivity Committee member. She is a co-founder of the spin-off OXOLUTIA S.L., and author of eleven patented inventions. In 2015 she was awarded the City of Barcelona Award for Experimental Science and Technology.

Xavier Vives

PhD in Economics from the University of California-Berkeley. He is currently the Academic Director of the Public-Private Sector Research Center at IESE Business School. He also edits the Journal of Economic Theory and co-edits the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. He was Special Advisor to the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition Joaquín Almunia from 2011 to 2014. In Catalonia, he has been involved in several official committees for the design of industrial and university plans and was a member of the Advisory Board for Economic Reactivation and Growth (CAREC) from 2011 to 2014.