Description

IFCA was accredited in 2018 among the top-50 national centers/units of excellence in the SO/MdM (Severo Ochoa/María de Maeztu) Program (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities). The MdM Award is granted to distinguished units that demonstrate scientific leadership and impact at global level, with highly competitive strategic research programmes in the frontiers of knowledge. The grant is for a period of 4 years (renewable), and it is funded with a total of 2M Euros, and the access to dedicated funding calls both for human resources and infrastructure support. 

The experts of the "Mathematics, Experimental Sciences and Engineering" area positively evaluated our unit (final resolution issued in November 2018). As reported by the committee on its consensus report: 

"The top 10 scientific contributions indicate a high level of productivity, international leadership, and scientific impact across all of the research lines at IFCA. Clearly, there is excellent overall quality, not just a few individual or group-specific stellar contributions"

The assessment also stresses the internationalization of the scientific activity as well as the in-house available infrastructure: 

"A large fraction of the research activity is centered on large and unique international research infrastructure. Almost by default such facilities are appropriate to IFCA's activities and foster its international competitiveness… The unit also hosts, operates and benefits from computing infrastructure, grid and cloud resources, which enable IFCA to exploit large data sets in international frontier projects"

The strategic research project submitted to this program builds on the achievements acquired by the institute in its more of 20 years of existence. IFCA has managed to consolidate solid and well-established research groups working in frontier physics lines and it treasures today a powerful combination of theoretical and experimental/observational research capability on basic science. We are now moving into a new phase where we need to position and maintain scientific excellence for the next decade.

Our vision for the next decade is to make IFCA a consolidated unit of international standards developing top class basic research in physics, gaining world class positioning through leadership in frontier research projects, and a reference centre in those subjects where multidisciplinarity is key for the advancement of knowledge.

More information: Open calls ]


  • Joint Centre with the combined effort of Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and University of Cantabria (UC)

    Instituto de Física de Cantabria
    Edificio Juan Jordá
    Avenida de los Castros, s/n
    E-39005 Santander
    Cantabria, Spain

  • © IFCA- Institute of Physics of Cantabria