The IEEC starts the process to appoint a new director to take over from Ignasi Ribas
The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) has initiated the process to appoint the person who will lead the Institute during the next four years.
The new director will take over from Ignasi Ribas, who has led the IEEC since July 2017. During his time at the helm of the Institute, the IEEC has experienced an unprecedented period of expansion, both as a benchmark research centre and as a key institution in the definition and deployment of the Government of Catalonia’s NewSpace Strategy.
Currently, the Institute carries out a powerful program for the research, development and technological innovation in the framework of scientific missions and projects. The IEEC participates and has high-level responsibilities in multiple space missions of the European Space Agency (ESA) and other scientific programs, as well as in ground instrumentation facilities. The Institute also develops space instrumentation in different areas of scientific and technological research for leading national and international programmes.
In the field of space sector promotion in Catalonia, since the approval of the NewSpace Strategy by the Catalan Government, in October 2020, the IEEC articulates the impulse of this sector in Catalonia and the advancement of knowledge in its related areas, contributing to the various pillars of the strategy and implementing activities to promote R&D&I, talent retention, construction of key space and terrestrial infrastructures and development of services and applications for the public administration and industrial sectors.
Ribas, who is also a Research Professor at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), has always combined his management duties with an outstanding career in academia—400 research papers with more than 25,000 citations—mainly focused on the discovery and characterization of exoplanets. Within this field, he has held high-level responsibilities in several ESA space missions and astronomical instruments, such as the CARMENES spectrograph and the CHEOPS, PLATO and Ariel missions. He is also the Principal Investigator of the PhotSat mission, the first astrophysical satellite developed entirely by the IEEC and its academic and industrial ecosystem.
Ribas also stands out for his commitment to dissemination and diffusion of scientific results, with regular participation in radio and television shows, contributions in the written media and delivery of seminars and courses on astronomy to schools, libraries and museums, among others.
Despite his decision to decline to run for a new renewal of his position as director, Ignasi Ribas will remain linked to the IEEC as a researcher. During this new stage, he will be able to devote more efforts to lead SPOTLESS, a project that has recently obtained an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council of the European Commission. SPOTLESS aims to improve research on exoplanets, in particular those that are similar to Earth.
The position currently open for the Director of the IEEC requires, among other qualities, an outstanding scientific career in space science research and experience in international team and project management. Defining the IEEC’s strategy and securing the resources for the IEEC to continue to carry out its task of promoting research and innovation will be some of its main attributions.
About the IEEC
The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC — Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya) promotes and coordinates space research and technology development in Catalonia for the benefit of society. IEEC fosters collaborations both locally and worldwide and is an efficient agent of knowledge, innovation and technology transfer. As a result of more than 25 years of high-quality research, done in collaboration with major international organisations, IEEC ranks among the best international research centres, focusing on areas such as: astrophysics, cosmology, planetary science, and Earth Observation. IEEC’s engineering division develops instrumentation for ground- and space-based projects, and has extensive experience in working with private or public organisations from the aerospace and other innovation sectors.
The IEEC is a non-profit public sector foundation that was established in February 1996. It has a Board of Trustees composed of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), and the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). The IEEC is also a CERCA centre.