The 13th edition of the Duran Farell Technological Research Award has recognised three research projects: the first maps of soil moisture, polar ice concentration, extent and thickness, and Arctic salinity, generated with data from two CubeCat nanosatellites; a device for the early detection of cancer; and the construction of 3D models for spinal cord injury repair.

Organised by the Board of Trustees of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) and supported by Naturgy Energy Group, the award recognises the quality of technology research works conducted during the past three years. There are two categories: one for female researchers or teams in which the principal investigator is a woman, and one for male researchers or teams in which the principal investigator is a man, with a cash prize of 10,000 euros each.

Ice thickness maps based on nanosatellite data
The winner of the category for male researchers or teams in which the principal investigator is a man was Adriano Camps, a professor at the UPC’s Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB), a researcher at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and director of the UPC’s NanoSat Lab.

Camps is the leader of the project FSSCat: the 1st CubeSat-based ESA Third-Party Mission contributing to the Copernicus program to Monitor Essential Climate Variables of the Water Cycle. It is the result of the work conducted by a team of young researchers, who were mainly doctoral students at the time—from May 2018 to July 2021.

The jury announced the winners of the 13th Duran Farell Award on the same day—30 November 2022—when the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine published a paper by the project participants summarising the mission.

The mission involved several developments, which were the object of the doctoral theses of the UPC team, led by professor Camps. The team was made up of UPC doctoral students—currently doctoral degree holders—Joan Francesc Muñoz Martín, Joan Adrià Ruiz de Azúa and Christopher Herbert; UPC doctoral degree holder Miriam Pablos; and Lara Fernández, David Llavería and Adrián Pérez Portero, doctoral students at the NanoSat Lab, the University’s small satellite and payload laboratory.

Proprietary technology was used to generate the first maps of soil humidity, polar ice concentration, extent and thickness, and Arctic salinity. The young researchers developed two 6-unit CubeSat-type nanosatellites, called ³Cat-5/A and ³Cat-5/ B, which provided the data.

On 3 September 2022, the two shoebox-sized nanosatellites were launched as part of the FSSCat mission, winner of the ESA’s 2017 Sentinel Small Satellite (S^3) Challenge Award. Led by Adriano Camps and Skoltech professor Alessandro Gölkar, the mission aimed to monitor polar ice and soil moisture while testing intersatellite communication systems with a view to creating a future network of federated satellites.

According to Copernicus policy, the data are open and available from the European platform NextGeoss, which is a federated data hub for access and exploitation of Earth observation data.

Early detection of colon cancer
The winner of the category for female researchers or teams in which the principal investigator is a woman was Marta Guardiola, a researcher at the BCN Medtech research unit of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

The project, which also received a cash prize of 10,000 euros, consists of a new system for the early detection of colon cancer using microwaves. It is devised to allow early detection of cancers that cannot be detected using current conventional optical colonoscopy, which will have a major impact on many people’s health.

The system is compatible with the methods currently applied to colonoscopy and offers several advantages. It detects polyps automatically and, therefore, the procedure is not reliant on visibility or the practitioners’ medical experience. The immediate diagnosis of the status of polyps determines more quickly how urgent the need is to treat each patient in order to prioritise the most serious ones. In the long term, this could ease the workload of hospital pathology departments, which currently have to analyse a large number of samples.

The technology-based spin-off MiWEndo Solutions was created as a result of this project in 2019, promoted by the UPF in collaboration with the UPC, the Hospital Clínic and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA).

The project is now in the final stage of conducting clinical studies in collaboration with prestigious European hospitals and it already has exploitation patents in seven countries: Germany, Spain, United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. A marketing strategy is planned to be launched in several European countries starting in 2024.

The jury praised the project and the spin-off as a success story of entrepreneurship and innovation, having been recognised with several national and international awards and distinctions.

The spin-off employs a workforce of 14 highly qualified technical specialists, half of them women. It participates in the industrial doctoral programme of the Government of Catalonia with the supervision of two doctoral theses (news item).

3D models for spinal cord injury repair
The jury also presented an honourable mention to researcher Zaida Álvarez, a UPC doctoral degree holder and a Beatriu de Pinós researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) working in the project Artificial Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds of Mobile Molecules Enhance Maturation of Human Stem Cell-Derived Neurons. The research focuses on the development of a synthetic matrix based on functionalised hydrogels of peptide amphiphiles (IKVAV). This type of platform allows the deployment of signals that recognise nervous system cells and promote faster maturation.

The project aims to use this bioactive platform as an in vitro model that simulates the extracellular matrix of the nervous system to induce neuronal maturation similar to that of adult nervous tissue.

This model could become a basic tool to search for new therapies that help understand the effect of certain drugs or regenerative therapies in culture plates. Álvarez’s scientific contributions so far are reflected in numerous articles of great impact, with some of them published in the scientific journal Science. The researcher has also achieved distinctions such as the Mike Line and the Ramón y Cajal grants or the Rafael Hervada award for biomedical research.

The IBEC is an interdisciplinary research centre created by the UPC, the Government of Catalonia and the University of Barcelona in 2005.

Further information

• Summary and description of the project:FSSCat: the 1st CubeSat-based ESA Third Party Mission contributing to the Copernicus program to Monitor Essential Climate Variables of the Water Cycle One of two winners of the 13th Duran Farell Technological Research Award.
• Paper FSSCat: The Federated Satellite Systems 3Cat Mission: Demonstrating the capabilities of CubeSats to monitor essential climate variables of the water cycle, by Adriano Camps and other authors, published in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine on 30 November 2022.
• Summary and description of the project for anew system for the early detection of colon cancer using microwaves , by Marta Guardiola, one of two winners of the 13th Duran Farell Technological Research Award. The project involved producing papers and led to the creation of MiWEndo Solutions.
• Summary and description of the project Artificial Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds of Mobile Molecules Enhance Maturation of Human Stem Cell-Derived Neurons, by Zaida Álvarez, honourable mention of the 13th Duran Farell Technological Research Award.