Logo autònoma picture
UAB's 40th anniversary 40 year celebration

UAB will be celebrating its 40th anniversary during the 2008/09 academic year. The first event took place on 26 September as part of the opening session of this academic year and was held at the conference hall of the Rectorate building.

The opening lecture was offered by former UAB Rector Antoni Serra-Ramoneda. The event included a recital of poems written by people connected to the university, which was interpreted by the actress Rosa Vila and accompanied on the piano by Francesc Cortés. There was also a film on the history of the University and highlights from the first forty years of its existence.

Other celebrations and events will take place throughout the academic year at different UAB faculties and centres, as well as exhibitions and the Anniversary Gala at the SAF sports centre.

Cover of Popular Science Number one in scientific productivity

According to a report issued by Popular Science, UAB is the number one public university in scientific productivity, with an index of 0.94.

Following UAB in the ranking are University of Barcelona (0.92) and Autonomous University of Madrid (0.77). When taking into account private universities in Spain, UAB comes in second place behind University of Navarra, with an index of 1.

UAB also stands out in its participation in the Seventh EU Framework Programme. Five of this year's projects are directed by UAB researchers and the University is participating in a total of 19 research projects. In this sense, it occupies the third position in Spanish universities, behind Technical University of Catalonia and Technical University of Madrid.

The report, which was published in the September edition of Popular Science, was written up using data from the research group Scimago (belonging to the University of Granada and CSIC), the Thomson Scientific, MICINN, CDTI, Universia and the Spanish network of universities OTRI.

International Students Welcome Days Welcoming session for international students

On 23 and 25 September, UAB held its annual welcoming session for international students. The sessions are the first contact international students have with the campus, its services and academic procedures.

The activites included film projections, guided tours around the campus and faculties and different workshops.

Port d'Informació Científica Worlwide computing grid installed

The PIC centre (Port d'Informació Científica) located at UAB is the largest network centre of the state taking part in this worldwide project to analyse and manage data originating from the particle accelerator Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Worldwide Computing Grid began to operate on 3 October 2008.

As Gonzalo Merino, CIEMAT researcher and responsible for the data processing centre Tier-1 at UAB's PIC centre, points out: "the Port d'Informació Científica is one of the eleven main centres of the Worlwide LHC Computing Grid". The PIC centre is the result of a collaboration between the UAB, the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation and the Catalan Government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Enterprise and collaborates in the project as a regional data and computing centre for operations in Spain and Portugal. It is located at the UAB Bellaterra campus and was designed in December 2003 as the Tier-1 centre for the Large Hadron Collider project.

The LHC is located near Geneva, Switzerland and is the largest particle accelerator in the world. The machine was designed to help discover the composition of matter and the origins of the universe. For thousands of physics, analysing data from the LHC by means of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid will be like searching for gold in a digital mine. Their research will reveal new particles which will give us clues as to the ultimate nature of matter and the origin of the universe.