The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is one of the major public universities in Spain with about 25,682 undergraduates, 3,072 master and 4,604 PhD students, including more than 4,000 foreign students. Currently (2018- 19), the University offers 93 bachelor degrees (humanities and arts, social sciences, health sciences, technology and physical sciences). Furthermore, the UAB offers 127 official Master’s degrees, 8 Erasmus Mundus Master's degrees and 68 PhD programmes. It was the first Spanish university to launch a BSc degree in Biotechnology. With over 3,800 researchers and teaching staff, the UAB is the third Spanish university and is ranked 193rd in the world (86 European) according to the QS- ranking 2019. In 2009 was awarded with the label of Campus of International Excellence by the Spanish Ministry of Education. UAB coordinates a strong scientific and technological centre (- UAB Sphere-), which comprises all the departments, science and technology services, research centres, institutes and university hospitals that are members of the UAB.

The Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering (DCBEE) is the UAB Department directly involved in this project and in IBISBA 1.0. The UAB-DCBEE currently has 124 staff members of which 106 are involved in teaching and research. The R&D activities are structured into 6 research groups in the field of industrial biotechnology and environmental engineering. Since 1995, the Department is the Biochemical Engineering Unit of the Catalan Reference Network in Biotechnology (XRB), as well as an associated unit of the Spanish CSIC research council. In this Department, the Group of Bioprocess Engineering and Applied Biocatalyis (BEAB) participates in IBISBA 1.0 with one facility (4 installations) including a Fermentation Pilot Plant. In addition, since 1995 the DCBEE hosts the European Space Agency (ESA) –MELISSA (Microbial Ecological Life Support System Alternative) demonstration Pilot Plant and is one of the 14 official MELISSA consortium members. The DCBEE is the leading actor in the UAB’s scientific partnership with the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB). Also, the UAB-DCBEE hosts collaborative research in the field of synthetic and systems biology of microorganisms as well as process development and scale-up of microbial cultivation processes with the CSIC (CIB/CNB) partner.


Key Persons Involved