”la Caixa” Foundation Fellowships

Three ICFOnians are among the 100 recipients of doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships from the ”la Caixa” Foundation’s 2024 calls. The doctoral INPhINIT and postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships pursue the twofold aim of supporting young talents to carry out their research in Spain or Portugal and attracting international researchers to these countries.

INPhiNIT Doctoral Fellowships

The 'la Caixa' Foundation received a total of 1,502 applications and awarded  60 fellowships across all disciplines for the INPhINIT Doctoral Fellowships program. ICFO PhD student, Harini Raghavan in the Atomic Quantum Optics research group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Dr. Morgan Mitchell, was awarded an INPhINIT fellowship to pursue a project in atomic sensor development for non-invasive brain imaging (read more)  

Junior Leader Postdoctoral Fellowships

In total, 597 applications were received and 40 fellowships were awarded in the fields of Health and life sciences, technology, physics, chemistry, engineering and mathematics.  ICFO recipients of Junior Leader Fellowships include:

Antonio Rubio Abadal is a Postdoctoral researcher in the Ultracold Quantum Gases group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Dr. Leticia Tarruell.  His first experience at ICFO was as a Summer Fellow in 2013 in the Quantum Information Theory group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Dr. Antonio Acín. He went on to received his Master in Physics from ETH Zurich and his PhD from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching. He returned to ICFO as a postdoctoral researcher in the Ultracold Quantum Gases Group in 2021. With this fellowship, he will pursue the project, “Boosting quantum simulation with an optical atomic clock”  (read more)

Carmen Rubio-Verdú leads the STM on 2D quantum materials research group at ICFO since Spring 2023 that uses low-temperature (~350 mK) STM to study the correlated phases that emerge in two-dimensional and moiré systems, aiming to understand the mechanism behind the superconducting state in magic-angle graphene, among other aspects of 2D quantum materials. Prior to arriving at ICFO, earned her PhD at nanoGUNE (San Sebastian, Spain) focusing on fundamental studies of magnetism at the atomic scale, the effect of dimensionality in superconductors, and interactions between single spins and superconductors.  In 2019, she obtained a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University (US) later moving to Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), where she concentrated on the study of electronic correlated phases in moiré materials. (read more)

The ”la Caixa” Foundation Fellowships not only offer competitive salaries but also include a robust cross-curricular training program. In the case of doctoral fellowships, aspects such as scientific communication, emotional well-being of researchers, leadership, and funding opportunities are reinforced. Postdoctoral fellowships, on the other hand, are designed to boost an independent scientific career, promoting innovation and leadership as fundamental pillars for professional development.

"These fellowships represent a first-class opportunity for the researchers who have received them, but also for society as a whole, because by supporting their research, we are committed to disciplines that contribute to the well-being of citizens and the construction of a better future for all," explained Josep Maria Coronas, CEO of the ”la Caixa” Foundation, during the scholarship presentation ceremony at the CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona.

The "la Caixa" Foundation Fellowship Program is one of the largest among those promoted by private entities in Spain and Europe, both in terms of the number of grants awarded and the diversity of disciplines covered. In total, the organization will allocate more than €21 million to this cohort of doctoral and postdoctoral fellows. Both programs have been co-financed by the European Commission through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Actions, within the context of the Horizon 2020 framework program.