Research News

Jordi Boronat, Director of the department of Physics, together with M. C. Gordillo from the University of Pablo de Olavide in Seville found evidences of of a supersolid quantum phase with hexatic correlations using quantum Monte Carlo methods. They have published these results in the prestigious Physical Review Letters

A team of researchers from the Computational Biology and Complex Systems research group (BIOCOM- SC) of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and the Center for Comparative Medicine and Bioimatge (CMCiB) of the Germans Trias and Pujol Research Institute (IGTP ), prepare a daily report by the European Commission and by the ECDC with the predictions of new cases of covid-19 to about 50 countries.

A team of researchers made up of professors from the UPC Physics department, from the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, University of Barcelona, ​​and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, have designed the theoretical prototype of a nano-swimmer that could drive directionally with light.

In an international collaborative project, researchers from the UPC Physics Department and the University of Potsdam (Germany) have identified a new form of cell division caused by protein waves. A discovery that supposes new applications in the field of synthetic biology and can serve as a paradigm to implement a self-organized proliferation strategy in artificial cells.

Researchers from the Computational Biology and Complex Systems group (BIOCOM-SC) of the UPC and the Center for Comparative Medicine and Bioimaging (CMCiB) of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), with the impulse of “la Caixa”, Developed a mathematical model to monitor the epidemic of COVID-19. The report they make for the European Union strategy office based on the model is updated daily and includes predictions for Catalonia, Spain and the European Union. The model also serves to analyze the effectiveness of the measures established in the different countries.

María Masoliver defended her thesis supervised by Cristina Masoller on February 20 at the Terrassa Campus. Titled `` Neuronal encoding and transmission of weak periodic signals '', the thesis presents a temporal neuronal code based not on the time in which neurons trigger action potentials but on the relative time between them and demonstrates that it is a plausible mechanism for encode information from weak periodic external stimuli.

Dani Mulas defends his thesis directed by Maria Amor Duch and Antonia Camacho on February 28 at the UPC South Campus (ETSEIB building). Titled "Levels and behavior of radionuclides in water treatment plants: The case of the Barcelona metropolitan area urban water cycle", the thesis presents data on the presence of radionuclides in water treatment plants as well as the application to sewage samples of analysis techniques to know the most significant chemical fractionation of the radionuclide, I-131, and its modeling of effluent levels