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The Pompeu Fabra University magazine / No. 10 / October 2015 Pompeu Fabra and the proliferation of international rankings 10 - 11 Natural language follows patterns or rules 08-09 The new faces of the 25th anniversary 12-13 ·In depth· ·Profiles· ·Community· ·On campus· Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I will remember; involve me, and I will understand. 04 - 07 Educational innovation: a collective challenge

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Page 1: UPF.EDU Nº10 (English)

The Pompeu Fabra University magazine / No. 10 / October 2015

Pompeu Fabra and the proliferation of international rankings

10-11

Natural language follows patterns

or rules08-09

The new faces of the 25th

anniversary12-13

·In depth··Profiles· ·Community·

·On campus·

Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I will remember; involve me, and I will understand.

04-07

educational innovation: a collective challenge

Page 2: UPF.EDU Nº10 (English)

I choose UPF

Bachelor's degree, double degree, master's degree and doctoral programmes in:

www.upf.edu/bachelorsdegree www.upf.edu/mastersdegree www.upf.edu/doctorates

A quality, international, public university

Follow us:

>> Communication >> Information and Communication Technologies>> Economic and Business Science >> Law >> Education >> Political and Social Sciences >> Health and Life Sciences >> Translation and Language Sciences >> Humanities and History

Page 3: UPF.EDU Nº10 (English)

Quality instruction and a commitment to educational innovation are two of the hallmarks of UPF. After all, this univer-sity was founded 25 years ago with the aim of providing only the highest-qual-ity education to the best students in

Catalonia in certain academic and professional fields. The years and data have shown that there was a place for such a new and different university, one whose scores today on various key measures of teaching quality more than dou-ble the university system average.

Still, the context around us has changed: the close, local, fa-miliar environment in which universities have traditionally operated has swelled to a constantly evolving global scale. Likewise, the profile of the students – now digital natives – entering the classrooms is different, as is the knowledge they expect to obtain from a university institution. In light of the often uncertain job market, the university must of-fer multidisciplinary programmes and skills, tools that will allow students to easily adapt to jobs that often times do not even yet exist. In the face of these emerging challeng-

es, our strategy hinges on shifting from a university model that restricts students to a closed catalogue of programmes to a much more flexible one, in which the university sup-ports and guides students throughout their academic life.

This academic year, we have undertaken several projects in this regard. In addition to the interdisciplinary bache-lor’s degree, double degree, and simultaneous study pro-grammes that we have already successfully launched, we have taken another step forward with the Open Degree programme. This programme, which has been very well received (2.7 applicants per place and a cut-off mark of around 11.5), allows students, under the guidance of a tu-tor, to try out various subjects offered at UPF before choos-ing a specific bachelor’s degree to pursue. Educational in-novation also means granting an important role to the use of new technologies in teaching. The launch of the VEU project, which incorporates new technologies into learn-ing spaces through the production of videos, applications, and MOOCs, is a good example. In short, these are bold and innovative projects that set us apart and help us grow as a university.

A TEACHING MODEL BASED ON INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION

toni batllori

jaume caSalS : rector of UPf

Written, produced and edited by the institutional communication and Promotion Unit (rector’s office).Plaça de la Mercè, 10-12. 08002 barcelona. tel.: 93 542 20 00. http://www.upf.edu. e-mail: [email protected] art by Mikel Jaso. LD b-44938-2010. ISSN 2014-0630

·Introduction· upf.edu 03October 2015

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·On campus·04 upf.edu

educational innovation: a collective challengeClassrooms need to become spaces for integrating learning, that allow students to put what theay have learned into practice and encourage discussion and reflection

‘Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I will remember; involve me, and I will understand.’ Humberto Llava-dor, a lecturer in the Department of Economics and Business, often refers to this quote by Confucius to describe where education is headed today. ‘We have to bear in mind that today’s stu-dents can go online and find a video explaining anything we might teach in a traditional class, with the added

advantage that it has been carefully edited and allows them to fast-for-ward and rewind at will’, he explained.

The world is changing, and the uni-versity education model is no excep-tion. ‘The students in our classrooms are digital natives, unlike the facul-ty, who, for the most part, are digi-tal immigrants’, said Mireia Trenchs, vice-rector for Teaching and Academ-ic Planning. Moreover, ‘they are used

to quickly updating their knowledge; they learn to use new apps and soft-ware easily and on their own’, she add-ed. Consequently, not only must lec-turers engage in an ongoing refresher process, the institution needs to be continuously renewing itself too.

For Manel Jiménez, a lecturer in the Department of Communication and the person responsible for incor-porating new technologies into teach-

October 2015

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·On campus· upf.edu 05

UPF students working in group at the Library/CRAI on the Poblenou campus.

FRedeRIC CAmALLongA

October 2015

ing at the University, today’s students are ‘multitaskers, used to operating through second screens, engagement mechanisms, and storytelling, under the umbrella of social learning’.

This new type of student ‘no longer sees barriers between disciplines, in-corporated into subjects as they have been understood to date, but rather operates in an interdisciplinary, proj-ect-based learning model’, Trenchs said. Therefore ‘this model, which is increasingly common in primary and secondary school, must be embraced in order to offer an education that truly prepares young people to tackle the complexity of the contemporary world’, she stressed.

In this scenario, what role should teachers play in the classroom? For Jiménez, the answer is clear: ‘They need to be the authorized voice that organizes and transmits knowledge; they need to be the tutor and mentor of the student’s learning dynamics.’

This means changing the direction of current educational schemes. ‘Class-rooms need to become spaces for inte-grating learning, that allow students to put what they have learned into practice and encourage discussion and reflection; in contrast, content should be acquired outside the classroom, in the hours students spend working out of class’, he explained.

But the challenges do not end there. In Trenchs’s view, there is cur-rently ‘a growing need to provide in-dividualized learning’. In this regard, UPF is taking decisive steps to offer groundbreaking models that can be tailored to students’ specific needs. For instance, the new UPF Open De-gree offers a means of admission to the university that does not predeter-mine the degree to be pursued, but rather opens the door to a variety of possibilities. The promotion of mas-sive open online courses (MOOCs) is likewise geared towards this achiev-

ing this goal: quality education, avail-able to all, with no predefined pace of learning. According to the vice-rector, ‘Young people today come to universi-ty with new consciences. Our responsi-bility is to offer them a place to learn, so they can help build a more just so-ciety.’ The service-learning methodol-

ogies advocated in recent years, which UPF is beginning to encourage, are a clear example.

Finally, educational changes must be made to turn university classrooms into truly internationalized, multilin-gual, and multicultural spaces, home to both foreign students and locals with roots in other cultures. ‘The con-tent of the curriculum should be inter-nationalized, as should the skills our students should ultimately acquire’, underscored Trenchs.

In short, today’s students are highly internationalized digital natives and multitaskers with an interdisciplin-ary outlook in search of a customized education and outlets for their social commitment to their community. This blend of characteristics is one of the most exciting, and complex, challeng-es for the adaptation of higher educa-tion in quite some time.

Platform for educational innovationThe Vídeos d’Ensenyament Univer-sitaris (University Education Videos, VEU) project promoted by the previ-ous vice-rector of Teaching and Aca-demic Planning, Josep-Eladi Baños, is one way in which the university is striving to meet the global challenge of educational innovation. According to Baños, ‘We have an obligation, as teachers, to learn about the new ways of teaching and to use the methods that best help students achieve their learn-ing objectives.’

It is an inclusive, productive, and educational initiative that aims to incorporate new technologies in

Tell me and I will forget; show me and I will remember; involve me and I will understand

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learning spaces, ranging from sup-plementary videos, to applets, blend-ed-learning dynamics (which combine face-to-face and online learning), and MOOCs.

The proposal is innovative because it leverages the skills of an existing cross-disciplinary team. According to Jiménez, one of the heads of the VEU project, ‘Unlike other universi-ties, UPF has chosen a system based on support and co-production with faculty.’ The team consists of lectur-ers who are part of the educational im-provement experience; members of the Centre for Teaching Quality and Inno-vation (CQUID), who help with edu-cational design and teacher training tasks; the Computing Service, which enables a quantum leap in the produc-tion quality of audiovisual and tech-nical materials; and the university’s

library, which, in addition to serving as an information resource manage-ment hub, contributes via La Facto-ria, which acts as the technical secre-tary for the projects. The Faculty of Translation and Interpretation also provides assistance in the form of the copyediting and translation of texts.

The project also includes a vari-ety of scheduled training activities in-tended to offer guidance and enable lecturers to integrate technological resources into their classrooms fairly autonomously, as well as to offer ad-vice on both technical and educational aspects of the implementation of fu-ture projects. Since its creation, two years ago, the VEU project has pro-vided support for the production of 14 MOOCs and has facilitated 11 projects for the inclusion of new technologies in the educational sphere.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs)The year 2012 was the year that MOOCs took off. Some experts warned

·On campus·06 upf.edu

that they would be a tsunami for uni-versities, which they considered flat-footed when it comes to reacting to sudden changes. However, UPF react-ed quickly, in part thanks to the cre-ation of the VEU project. As Jiménez explained, ‘It is one of the universities to work with most platforms – Miríada X, Coursera, Open edX, P2PU, UCATx – an experience that has afforded it ex-pertise and comparative criteria when it comes to designing MOOCs.’ UPF has emerged as the most competitive institution, in relative terms, with re-gard to the grant programme run by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR), having secured funding to create eight courses.

It was also the first university in Spain to join the FutureLearn plat-form, an initiative of the Open Uni-versity, with support from the British Library and the BBC, as well as one of the first non-English-speaking in-stitutions to do so in Europe. Through Miquel Oliver, a lecturer in the Depart-ment of Information and Communi-cation Technologies (DTIC), it is also contributing to research on the MOOC phenomenon, thanks to the Telefóni-ca-UPF Chair on Social Innovation in Education. Oliver is also a member of the group working on the develop-ment of the Catalan platform UCATx.

But why is it so important to join the wave? According to Davin-ia Hernández, a lecturer in the DTIC and an expert on the use of ICT in ed-ucation, it is important because ‘this model not only significantly expands the educational offer and the avail-able open education resources, but is also a new tool for scientific dissemi-nation and promotion and the inter-nationalization of the university and its faculty’.UPF wants to make participating in the movement a priority and to do it competitively in a global context, ‘with a view to achieving milestones with regard to optimizing the quali-ty of learning, methodological inno-vation, and the confluence of teach-ing, research, and knowledge transfer’, Jiménez explained.

October 2015

Incorporation of educational innovation in UPF subjects

NEWTON’S METHOD Anna Carreras, who teaches

the first-year subject ‘Calculus and Numerical Methods’, offered in engineering programmes at the Polytechnic School, noticed that her students needed more support to grasp Newton’s method and that conventional mathematics textbooks often failed to make it understandable. As a result, she began to create a series of audiovisual materials that would make it possible to reproduce a visual explanation of the method much more efficiently and professionally than could be done in a traditional theory class. She also added brief questionnaires to the end of each chapter for students to assess their progress. Using this format allowed students to check the content as often as they needed and to advance at their own pace, resulting in overall improvements in the final outcomes.

BLENDED LEARNING Humberto Llavador, from the

Department of Economics and Business, is leading a project that combines the concepts of flipped classrooms and scheduled classes. The theory, or scheduled, portion of the subject is offered online and can be fully adapted to each student’s pace. Feedback is provided by allowing them to test their knowledge. The practical, or flipped, portion of the subject is carried out in person in a seminar-style class. It allows students to work on, apply and discuss the key concepts they acquired online in advance. Assessment is based on the assimilation of the content that allows students to participate in the seminar. Participating in the practical portion thus becomes a right that students must earn.

as teachers, we have to use the methods that best help our students achieve their goals

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·On campus· upf.edu 07

The 3rd golden Age of Television

UPF sIgnATURe mooCs

‘To make a good one, you need to be passionate about it.’ That was the cat-egorical response of Carlos Scolari, a lecturer in the Department of Communi-cation, when asked about the essential ingredients to create a MOOC. ‘As with a feature film or an interactive project, there is a lot of preproduction. But you also have to design the learning strategy, the content, the pacing and sequence of activities, and the assessments.’

He is currently working on the sec-ond edition of the course, which is being offered via the Miríada X platform, and which he jointly created with the writer Jorge Carrion. The course has been quite successful, attracting a total of more than 7,500 students between the two editions.

The subject matter is key to success. ‘We wanted to find something that could interest people with different back-grounds, profiles, and passions’, Scolari explained. ‘The new generation of televi-sion series is a global phenomenon, and we need to close the gap between universities and these new narrative forms’, he added.

A pioneer in the sphere of MOOCs, he is already thinking about how to continue innovating in the field. ‘We need to begin to experiment with other formats, for ex-ample, very short online courses or – why not? – the educational possibilities of the language and aesthetic of YouTubers’.

Talk to me with Your Hands, Listen to me with Your eyes

This introductory MOOC to Catalan Sign Language is currently under pro-duction and is slated to be launched in late 2015, on the FutureLearn platform. Its promoters, Josep Quer and Cristi-na Gelpí, lecturers in the Department of Translation and Language Scienc-es, are motivated ‘by a component of social responsibility, as the course is intended to help promote the natural language of the deaf’, they explained. According to Gelpí, ‘We need to en-courage strategies that contribute to

the complete integration of deaf indi-viduals as fully entitled citizens.’

When designing the course, Quer and Gelpí were fully aware that they could not simply repackage conventional material. ‘We needed to design a new supervised learning path, with materials and activi-ties to help students achieve certain pre-defined skills’, Quer explained. Looking back on their experience to date, they would highlight, in addition to the in-frastructure facilities the university has offered them, the interdisciplinary co-operation involved, which has let them ‘establish synergies with other fields and experience first-hand how the exchange of viewpoints enriches all members of a project’, Gelpí said.

Image of the mooC ‘Talk to me with Your Hands, Listen to me

with Your eyes. UPF

Jorge Carrion and Carlos scolari, creators of the mooC ‘The 3rd golden

Age of Television’. UPF

October 2015

The european discovery of China

This MOOC, the first UPF has offered through the FutureLearn platform, has already drawn more than 5,000 stu-dents. Dolors Folch, a professor emer-itus in the Department of Humanities, created the course, which looks at the history of China and Europe in a glob-al context in order to understand the origins and persistence of certain ste-reotypes about the Asian country in Europe.

Folch stressed how vital it is ‘to have a clear understanding of how the chosen

platform for the MOOC works, as it will require adaptations, by both the univer-sity and the teacher’.

‘MOOCs attract people from all over the world, which is one of their greatest strengths, as it really opens up the num-ber of topics covered’, Folch explained. In this regard, she said, MOOCs should ‘serve as a lever to promote quality on-line education that opens the doors to university education for a large number of students’. Not only do they offer ben-efits to students, she added, they are also ‘a great tool for teachers, affording them access to a hitherto unimaginable number of quality resources’.

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— What does it mean to have brought the 27th edition of the ESSLLI to UPF? — It is one of the most important sum-mer schools in its field. It is organized

·Profiles·08 upf.edu

orally or signed. They evolve organ-ically among all speakers, and, as a result, we don’t usually think about them: descriptive grammars simply offer an abstract summary of the com-mon traits found in people’s coordinat-ed language behaviour. In contrast, a formal language is consciously creat-ed and explicitly defined with basic symbols and rules for combining them. Examples of formal languages would include the logic of propositions and programming languages, such as Java.

— What do language, logic and com-putation have in common? Can real-ity be transformed into a set of algo-rithms?— Natural language follows patterns or rules. They may be probabilistic,

lOuISe mcNallY is a professor of linguistics in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at UPF and a member of the Formal Linguistics Research Group (GLIF). She coordinated the local organization of the 27th edition of the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI), held at the university in August. She received the ICREA Academia award (for excellence in research) in 2008 and 2013. She is vice-rector for teaching staff at UPF.

October 2015

by the Association for Logic, Lan-guage and Information (FoLLI), with the support of other international as-sociations dedicated to logic and com-puting. It promotes synergies between logic, linguistics, computer science, philosophy of language, and cogni-tive sciences in order to shed light on the nature of human language and improve language technologies. This year, some 380 people from 40 coun-tries took part in 48 courses and work-shops held over the two weeks that the school was in session.

— How would you explain ‘formal lan-guage’ and ‘natural language’ to a layperson?— ‘Natural language’ refers to the lan-guages spoken by humans, whether

‘language is only a tool, like a pencil. We can use a pencil to do a lot of things other than write’

louise mcNallyPROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS AND VICE-RECTOR FOR TEACHING STAFF AT UPF

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·Profiles· upf.edu 09

guage is not so different in this regard, although its complexity and role in our social relations and cognition certain-ly influence how we go about adapt-ing it to our needs.

— Do statistics and psychology play a role in the conceptualization of lan-guage? — Absolutely. The natural world is so complex that researchers tend to take a ‘divide and conquer’ approach to it, focusing on just a few aspects of a giv-en phenomenon. Hence, the boundar-ies between disciplines and methodol-ogies. This strategy may be inevitable, but it is also dangerous.

— How can the architecture of human language be described? What differ-ences are there between different lan-guages? — All human languages have a vocab-ulary (morphemes), a system for com-bining it in complex words and struc-tures (grammar), and conventions with regard to interpretation and usage (se-mantics and pragmatics). They also all have certain minimum units that are meaningless on their own (e.g., sounds) and a system for combining them to form morphemes (phonology). Beyond that, there is incredible variety. To give one exotic example, the Dagaare lan-guage, spoken in Ghana, does not di-vide nouns into count nouns (lake) and non-count nouns (rice), but rather us-es the morphology of ‘number’ to mark whether or not an object is individuat-ed regularly or not, such that the same suffix (-ri) is added to the word rice to refer to a grain of rice and to the word lake to refer to a plurality of lakes. This example raises the question of wheth-er there could be a theory on the lim-its of variation. What do the Catalan and Dagaare number systems have in common? Because of their abstract na-ture, formal models help us research these questions.

— Turning to your experience as vice-rector for teaching staff, what challenges do the information soci-ety and new technologies pose for faculty?

FREDERIC CAmALLONGA

— I would highlight two: knowing how to absorb and filter the avalanche of information we are exposed to today and not pointlessly encouraging it.

— What would you highlight from your experience as vice-rector?— I have really enjoyed meeting people from all fields and of all backgrounds and categories, as well as learning how the different communities, both aca-demic and administrative, work.

— What projects have been launched?— I have mainly worked on two goals: improving planning and contracting processes and enhancing human re-source policy, for example, by partic-ipating in the EU’s ‘Human Resourc-es Strategy for Researchers’ (HRS4R) programme.

— Academic inbreeding is a recurring theme at universities. What measures is UPF taking in this area?— One of the most important measures being taken to reduce it is to better publicize job openings at UPF in or-der to attract applicants from all over. The implementation of a dissociation policy has also helped, that is, not con-tracting the university’s own PhDs for tenure-track positions until they have left UPF and worked somewhere else for at least two years.

— Another common topic is the lack of women faculty. What can be done to increase their numbers?— I would like to point to one very important factor: being very careful not to penalize or reward external behaviour (e.g., excessive modesty or self-confidence) that does not reflect a person’s true value.

SHe lIKeSAbove all, spending time with her family, as well as:l A MUSICIAN: Dave Grohll A BOOK: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Carol A VALUE: Responsibility

subject to exceptions, or different from the rules you learned at school, but they can be inferred by observing how we speak. Logic and computation al-so follow defined rules with specific properties. Therefore, if we can map what we observe in language to a log-ic or computational process, we will learn something.

— To what extent can language be said to refer to or explain the world we live in? What limitations does it have when it comes to interpreting reality? — People often say that language ‘has meaning’, but really we are the ones doing the referring, explaining, and interpreting. Language is only a tool, like a pencil. We can use a pencil to do a lot of things other than write. Lan-

October 2015

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·In depth·10 upf.edu

According to the vice-rector, ‘Rankings are important for UPF, as we tend to do pretty well: we tend to be ranked first or within the top three in the national rankings and perform notably in the international ones.’ He added, ‘However, they are not equal-ly good for everyone, as they depend on how the items are weighted and

‘University rankings are widely re-ported in the media and, thus, have a large social impact. People love lists and rankings, as if everything were as simple as a football league.’ So sum-marized Carles Ramió, vice-rector for Institutional Planning and Evaluation at UPF, the growing interest in univer-sity rankings.

uPF and the proliferation of university rankingsRecent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of such rankings, both national and international, in which UPF has carved out a place for itself among the leading young universities

whether the ranking is done in abso-lute or relative terms. UPF is a very small, very young university that, for example, simply cannot compete in absolute rankings of scientific output.’

Nevertheless, the many rankings available (the most recent report by the European University Associa-tion on rankings, which looked at on-ly those with the greatest impact and influence, identified fifteen) and the different positions a single university might have depending on how each ranking is calculated can often lead to confusion. Lluís Coma, a specialist in UPF’s Studies, Planning and Eval-uation Unit, explained these dispari-ties thusly: ‘Each ranking gives pref-erence to a given area of universities’ activity, usually teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and internation-alization. That preference is reflected in the choice of indicators taken into account and the relative weight given

October 2015

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·In depth· upf.edu 11

ties Summit, a meeting of the top 100 universities under 50 years old. The event will take place on the Ciutadel-la campus on 6 and 7 April 2016 and will be attended by the heads of the participating institutions.

Rankings as part of the university’s strategyAccording to Ramió, these universi-ty rankings are beneficial: ‘The rank-ings have a clear positive externality; they keep universities focused on con-tinuous improvement and excellence, as they all want to be well-ranked. They introduce a competitive logic in the system that is healthy in that each institution tries to do things better’, he said.

This notwithstanding, the vice-rec-tor also warned of the potential neg-ative impact of rankings in the event of excessive reliance on them. ‘You cannot design university policy solely with a view to doing well in the rank-ings and improving certain weighted aspects, such as research in interna-tional papers, whilst neglecting other very relevant aspects for the university community and society at large. UPF is quite cognizant of this’, he said.

October 2015

to each one in the final calculation of where each institution stands.’

Multiple prestigious rankings, different focusesSome rankings are clearly oriented to-wards research (Leiden or Scimago); the Academic Ranking of World Uni-versities (better known as the Shang-hai ranking) gives more importance to indicators such as the number of alumni who are Nobel laureates; the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings, whilst taking teaching into account,

primarily focus on research and in-stitutional reputation. Other rankings aim to distance themselves from closed rankings of universities by allowing users to prepare their own rankings, based on the indicators they choose. This is the case with U-Multirank, pro-moted by the European Union, and its Spanish version, U-rankings, spon-sored by the IVIE and the BBVA Foun-dation. Another key proposal at the national level is that offered by the CyD Foundation.

In addition to the general rankings, many rankings, both national and in-ternational, seek to differentiate them-selves from the rest by offering distinct products, whether that means ranking institutions by field (as the Shanghai and THE rankings do, the latter of which ranked UPF 67th worldwide in the social sciences), more specifical-ly by subject (such as the QS, which ranks UPF 23rd in economics), or even preparing rankings of the top young universities.

UPF, twelfth-best young university in the world, according to THEThe ranking in which Pompeu Fabra has performed best is the Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 ranking, a list of the world’s top one hundred univer-sities under 50 years old. In the 2015 edition, UPF was ranked twelfth in the

world (up one slot from 2014), fifth in Europe, and first in Spain.

According to Phil Baty, the edi-tor of Times Higher Education World University Rankings, ‘UPF is a dy-namic institution, strongly positioned in our ranking of young universities. I think that not only being young, but also being small, could be an advan-tage when it comes to maintaining a specialized, flexible, responsive uni-versity in today’s changing times, one with a simple management system that allows people to work, without requiring every decision to be based on some labyrinthine bureaucracy.’

Baty explained why the oldest in-stitutions tend to dominate the THE’s general ranking, noting, ‘Traditional older universities have had time to accumulate considerable wealth and to build large alumni networks span-ning multiple generations. They are usually part of the very structure of major cities and, thus, tend to have a good reputation that helps them stay on top.’

In the framework of the events to mark its 25th anniversary over the 2015/2016 academic year, UPF will host the annual THE Young Universi-

uPF will host the annual THe Young universities Summit

evolution of UPF’s performance on three main rankings

TImeS HIgHer educaTION WOrld uNIverSITY raNKINgS

2012 2013 2014 2015World 201-225 164 165 164europe 84-93 72 72 76spain 1-3 1 1 2

QS WOrld uNIverSITY raNKINgS

2012 2013 2014 2015World 266 281 298 295europe 124 132 138 133spain 5 5 6 6

arWu (SHaNgHaI)

2012 2013 2014 2015World 401-500 301-400 301-400 201-300spain 8-11 5-8 5-8 2-5*does not allow filtering by region (europe)

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·Community·12 upf.edu October 2015

The new faces of the 25th anniversaryA group of new first-year students at UPF describe what led them to choose the university and their programmes, as well as their initial impressions.

It has been 25 years since Pompeu Fabra University first opened its doors. In October 1990, 316 law and econom-ics and business students sat, for the first time, in the chairs of the new class-rooms in the old Fòrum Vergés build-ing, at Carrer Balmes 132, on the cor-ner of Rosselló.

In October 2015, nearly 2,650 new first-year students enrolled on 26 dif-ferent bachelor’s degree programmes. All placed their trust in an urban in-stitution that today comprises three different campuses: Ciutadella, Mar, and Poblenou. Things have obvious-ly changed a lot, but the newcomers’

enthusiasm and eagerness to embark on a new stage in their life remains the same.

The newest programmes draw studentsThe UPF Open Degree programme, launched in the 2015/2016 academic year, allows students to choose subjects from various degree programmes during their first year. Bàrbara Serra chose it (she has registered for subjects on busi-ness management and administration, political science, and labour manage-ment and relations) because she was in-terested in more than one programme.

‘Once I found out about the UPF Open Degree programme, which would al-low me to sample various programmes and then decide, I knew it was the right choice for me’, she explained. She hopes to enjoy herself and have a positive ex-perience, but above all to get a good ed-ucation that will allow her to find work.

Aitana Álvarez, from Mallorca, made major changes in her life to study at UPF. She has enrolled on the bache-lor’s degree programme in Law, one of the programmes that the university has offered from the start, but will combine it with the programme in Criminology. She will do this through the new dou-

ariadna Fosch: ‘The spaces on the Poblenou campus are huge!’

Bàrbara Serra: ‘I hope to enjoy myself and get a good education to find work’

andrés martin: ‘The university has done its utmost to make us feel comfortable’

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·Comunitat· upf.edu 13October 2015

ble degree programme launched this academic year, which Aitana had been hoping to see for some time. When the opportunity arose, she did not hesitate. ‘When I saw it on UPF’s website last year, I didn’t think twice: a good univer-sity, in a city like Barcelona, and in such a central location… It didn’t require a lot of thought.’ These first few days she says she has felt both nervous and excited.

Jan Baserba scored 9.7 on the uni-versity entrance exam, the highest mark in the province of Girona in 2015. He chose to enrol on the bachelor’s degree programme in Philosophy, Politics and Law, a fairly new programme (it was launched three years ago), offered joint-ly with Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and the Autonomous Universi-ty of Madrid (UAM), which this year had the highest cut-off mark for admission (12.78) of all programmes offered at UPF.

‘I chose this programme for the sub-jects and, especially, its interdisciplinary

jan Baserba: ‘There is a lot of political and cultural activity on the ciutadella campus’ (*

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The majority of the 2,634 new first-year students were admitted through the application process (2,565), and 91% were able to enrol on their first choice of programme. They hail from the city of Bar-celona (30%), elsewhere in the province of Barcelona (41.4%), and, to a lesser extent, the provinces of Girona (7.4%), Tarragona (5.4%), and Lleida (3.4%). Nearly 11% are from elsewhere in Spain, and 1.4% are in-ternational. With regard to gender, 59.4% are women and 40.6% are men; on aver-age, they are 19.36 years old.

However, the latter two variables vary by programme. Thus, the aver-

age age of enrolment on the bachelor’s degree programme in Telematics Engi-neering was 20.67, whilst for the bach-elor’s degree programme in Translation and Interpretation, it was 19.95. With regard to gender, considerably more men enrolled at the Polytechnic School (78.6% men vs 21.4% women), whilst considerably more women enrolled on the UPF Open Degree programme (72.7% women vs 27.3% men) and in the faculties of Translation and Interpreta-tion (81.9% vs 18.1%), Communication (73.1% vs 26.9%), and Health and Life Sciences.

focus, as well as for the possibilities it offers to get to know multiple universi-ties’, Jan explained. The Girona native has a positive opinion of his initial con-tact with UPF, where he has been par-ticularly surprised by the high levels of political and cultural activity he has encountered.

Interest in the fields of biomedicine and communicationOn the Mar campus, Andrés Martin enrolled on the bachelor’s degree pro-gramme in Human Biology this year. The young Amposta native highlights the warm welcome he has received from both the different university services and the students from other years and programmes. After studying sociology at the University of Barcelona (UB), An-drés knew that he wanted to study biolo-gy and ultimately chose UPF. ‘The train-ing it offers has a much more practical orientation, which will leave me better prepared to successfully enter the job market’, he explained.

Ariadna Fosch will also study on the Mar campus, but will split her time be-tween it and the Poblenou campus, as the bachelor’s degree programme she has chosen, in Biomedical Engineer-ing, is carried out in both places. ‘The Poblenou campus is what has most sur-prised me these first few days: the spaces there are huge!’ she said. For Ariadna,

the fact that the programme, which was launched in the 2011/2012 year, com-bines the more technical engineering part with the part on biology from the start was decisive in her choice.

Likewise on the Poblenou campus, Mar Catot, from the town of Monis-trol de Calders (Moianès), chose to en-rol on the bachelor’s degree programme in Translation and Interpretation be-cause she loves languages, especially Catalan sign language. ‘I want to learn that system because it is linked to a sec-tor of society that is often marginalized. I would really like to be able to help it grow’, she said. Surprised by the num-ber of Erasmus students she has met, she chose UPF because ‘it is the only Cata-lan university that offers these studies, it is very prestigious, and it has a lot of faculties and degree programmes.’

Alex Benítez has enrolled on the bachelor’s degree in Journalism and has been pleasantly surprised by the ‘good vibes’ established from the start between students and faculty. Speak-ing of the institution’s 25th anniversary, he said, ‘I see UPF as a relatively young, modern university, able to understand the times we live in and to adapt to them technologically.’ Indeed, all of these stu-dents are aware that they have enrolled at the university in a special year, that marking its 25th anniversary, something that all of them find exciting.

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Salvador alsiusVICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CATALAN AUDIOVISUAL COUNCIL (CAC) AND LECTURER IN THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AT UPF

‘We need to look out for what matters most, the concept of public

SalvadOr alSIuS clavera (Barcelona, 1948) was one of the founders of UPF’s journalism programme, which was launched in 1992 in the Rambla building. He has been a lecturer for it ever since. In July 2014, he became vice-president of the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC), the independent authority that regulates audiovisual communication in Catalonia.

— This year, UPF is celebrating its 25th anniversary. How has the university changed over the years?—The rector at the time, Enric Ar-gullol, invited me, as a journalism professional, to sit on the committee tasked with drawing up the curricu-

in different ways. Emphasizing ba-sic training and a practice-oriented approach are some of the distinctive features of how journalism is taught at the university. All of this is relat-ed to the fact that, at the start, efforts were made to recruit a strong faculty, who brought their skills and knowl-edge to bear in the classroom. Finding the right balance between academics and people with hands-on experience in the everyday business of journalism is key. These days, there seems to be a trend towards making things increas-ingly academic, and that worries me.

— Is the ‘integrated newsroom’, which you set up, a model for other universities?

FREDERIC CAmALLONGA

lum for this degree. It was immediate-ly apparent to me that UPF could be an innovative university, governed by different criteria, a trait that has been confirmed over the years. However, that fire needs to be fed. We have to keep fighting. Otherwise, the institu-tion will fall prey to inertia. I consid-er myself lucky; I was able to partici-pate early on in a number of important things, at the Autonomous Universi-ty of Barcelona (UAB), at TV3, and at UPF.

— Has teaching in the field of jour-nalism changed a lot over the years?— Yes, it has, and not only here, but at all universities, plenty of which have sought to follow in UPF’s footsteps

October 2015

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try’s self-esteem. Nevertheless, there is a huge problem with regard to cer-tain asymmetries. The system is high-ly dependent on media produced out-side of Catalonia, content in Spanish that is deeply ingrained, over which neither the CAC nor the Catalan gov-ernment has jurisdiction and which, by law, cannot even include broadcasts in Catalan. There are other examples, too, such as the difficulty of produc-ing advertising in Catalan. These are just some of the infinite drawbacks of not having your own state.

— And now the new media business platforms are jumping on the wag-on…— That is an added danger: these are new means of production, which are not conventional media, but rather transnational companies that more-over control the infrastructure and communication technology. Telecoms are starting to produce their own con-tent, and they are very unlikely to pro-duce anything in Catalan, or tailored to the idiosyncrasies and sensibil-ity of a small country. I’m less con-cerned about business concentration than vertical integration. It is a huge threat, and it is coming on strong. Net-flix is another example.

‘We are not looking for “all-terrain” journalists, but rather people who are comfortable working with all types of media’

‘I am less concerned about business concentration than vertical integration’

‘The catalan audiovisual system has a huge problem with regard to certain asymmetries’

— What can be done?— Once again, we can only play Da-vid to their Goliath, as we did in 1984, when TV3 was created. It took imagina-tion, and we had to struggle to create a broadcaster that was worthy of a state. Today, too, we are facing an uphill battle to achieve anything: production quotas, a voice-over system, etc. I don’t really know what needs be done. That is one of the conclusions the CAC is trying to reach in the Llibre Blanc de l’Audiovi-sual (White Paper on Audiovisual Me-dia) that the Catalan parliament com-missioned it to write and with which it is trying to take the pulse of the entire sector. We need to look out for what mat-ters most, the concept of public service, which is more important than the me-dia themselves, whether public or pri-vate, which are contingent.

— Should the CAC have jurisdiction over online content?— This is a topic of discussion among audiovisual regulators the world over, none of which are Spanish, as Spain is the only European country that lacks a body for this purpose. However, the Internet is like an ocean that pours out through every crack, and this type of regulation is very difficult. It’s already expensive just to regulate radio and television stations. There are two main questions: whether there needs to be a shift towards controlling online content, too, and whether the CAC should also include telecommunications, two ar-eas that are closely related. In principle, the answer is yes, that all of these issues should fall under the aegis of a single au-thority; however, it would no longer be the CAC, but rather a new body.

— Are there any specific aspects of the Internet that you find especial-ly troubling? — In the area of protecting minors, not only online, but also in general, the CAC has drawn certain red lines, and within this area, there is one problem that we are especially attuned to: on-line gambling, which is on the rise. It’s something that should concern us all; it needs to take precedence over indi-vidual sensibilities.

— Absolutely, and I would add that it is starting to be one for the profession as a whole. The integration of news-rooms and multimedia and transmedia work is inexorable in the media indus-try, so it is important to prepare highly versatile students. I am not referring to ‘all-terrain’ journalists, but rather turning out people who are equally comfortable working with all formats. In my view, the journalism curricu-lum has two crown jewels: first, the basic training, which students com-plete at the different faculties in the first and second year, an intrinsical-ly good feature that has contributed to the programme’s internal prestige; and second, the integrated newsroom in which they participate in the third year, where students earn their pro-fessional chops, and which is the final stage in their basic training.

— Is it harder for journalists to do their jobs well today? — I’ve been in the profession for some time now, and, looking back, there has never, ever been a time when people haven’t said, ‘Times are changing. From now on, things are going to be very different. Everything is going to be harder.’ The Internet obviously con-stitutes a major change both in our lives and for the profession. But so did the advent of video, home camer-as, etc. What really worries me is the possible deterioration of fundamental aspects of the profession, such as the ability to narrate what we call reality in accordance with certain basic prin-ciples: truthfulness, justice, freedom, etc. That’s what sometimes strikes me as fragile.

— What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the Catalan audiovi-sual system?— Catalonia has a strong, sound, high-quality audiovisual system with an obvious flagship, Televisió de Cata-lunya and the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (Catalan Broad-casting Company, CCMA) as a whole, which has done invaluable work over the last thirty years to normalize the Catalan language and boost the coun-

October 2015

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eSSeNTIa has generated many new applications for music research and the music industry

October 2015

Xavier serra, coordinator of the music Technology group. FRedeRIC CAmALLongA

ESSENTIA is an audio analysis software library developed by the Mu-sic Technology Group (MTG) in the Department of Information and Com-munication Technologies (DTIC). It is modular, expandable, and easy to in-corporate into any computer program. Distributed under an open software licence to promote its use in research, it is also available under proprietary licence for use in commercial appli-cations.

The library includes an extensive collection of audio-processing algo-rithms that enable the automatic re-trieval of content properties, the sta-tistical characterization of data, and calculations involving large sets of spectral descriptors. ESSENTIA also won the ACM Multimedia 2013 Open Source Software competition.

The MTG, set up more than twenty years ago, is a research group strong-ly committed to technology transfer that has sought to make open research compatible with having a social and industrial impact. ESSENTIA is a par-adigmatic case in that it has gener-ated a wide variety of new applica-tions, both for commercial use and for research.

Freesound Labs Launched in July 2015, Freesound Labs is a directory of projects, hacks, applications, research, and other ini-tiatives that use content from Free-sound, a free, collaborative, online

platform that uses ESSENTIA and is based on Creative Commons licences. It is used in many artistic productions, including plays, ringtones, and feature films, as well as by prestigious research institutions worldwide.

Thanks to the Freesound API, com-puter applications have been developed able to directly access the content. Ac-cording to Serra, it is ‘a collaborative platform for sharing sounds’.

AcousticBrainz, a high-impact project for the scientific communityThe MTG and the MetaBrainz Foun-dation joined forces to lead Acoustic-Brainz, an initiative based on the contri-butions of users who use the ESSENTIA software to analyse music recordings. It is thus another source of the data that this software analyses.

To date, AcousticBrainz has anal-ysed almost three million audio tracks. For each one, the tool generates data on basic characteristics, such as tonal-ity or the number of beats per minute. These data are then used to extract other more important characteristics for the end user, such as the piece’s mood or genre. All of this information can be accessed through the Acoustic-Brainz website for use in research or computer applications.

‘We hope that AcousticBrainz will have a large impact on the scientif-ic community. The data obtained will make it possible to take on new and in-teresting challenges that will give rise

The audio processing software was created by the Music Technology Group (MTG) led by Xavier Serra

to innovative technologies’, Serra ex-plained. Users can use the Acoustic-Brainz website to analyse their own mu-sic collections. The contribution of many users is key, as it will be what guaran-tees the tool’s success.

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Images shared by members of the UPF community on

Instagram with the hashtag #FotoUPF (#UPFPhoto)

#UPFPhotoneW PRoJeCTs To gRoW oUT oF essenTIA

mUsICBRICKs, promoting innovation in musical technology

CAmUT, automatic analysis of Carnatic and Hindustani music

In early 2015, the MTG launched ‘Mu-sical Building Blocks for Digital Makers and Content Creators’, or MusicBricks, a new collaborative project within the framework of an innovative action fi-nanced by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme and coordinated by the French company SIGMA Orionis SA.

The main goal of MusicBricks is to mature innovative technologies ob-tained through research to make them available and useful to the cultural and creative industries sector in Europe.

The group recently received one of the 45 Proof of Concept grants awarded by the European Research Council to researchers who have already been awarded a research grant from the European body. It will use the €150,000 grant to carry out the project ‘Culture Aware Music Technologies’ (CAM-UT), which aims to promote the commer-cialization of some of the technologies developed within the framework of the ‘Computational Models for the Discovery of the World’s Music’ (CompMusic) project and bring technologies for the automatic analysis of Carnatic and Hindustani music to the Indian market.

@miguelmesoReflected library 219/365

@jolapompeuLlueix el sol al campus de

la Ciutadella

@biizarreFeliz día de la danza. Happy dance

day. Dancer: Clara Sans

@univpompeufabra

MORE INFORMATION— Musical Technology Group (MTG): http://www.mtg.upf.edu/ — ESSENTIA: http://essentia.upf.edu/ — AcousticBrainz:

http://acousticbrainz_org/ — MusicBricks: http://mtg.upf.edu/projects/music-bricks — CompMusic: http://compmusic.upf.edu/

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Recognition

The department is one of six re-search units in Spain to receive the new distinction, awarded by the Office of the Secretary of State for Research, Development, and In-novation of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, within the framework of its ‘Cen-tres of Excellence’ programme. The award includes 500,000 in funding every year for four years.

The new Maria de Maeztu dis-tinction recognizes excellence in smaller research structures, espe-cially ones located at universities, and thus serves to complement the Severo Ochoa distinctions awarded to research centres and similar larg-er institutions.

According to Arcadi Navarro, director of the DCEXS, ‘As mem-

bers of Pompeu Fabra University, we are especially pleased by this recognition of our efforts to show that a university department can conduct top-tier research. It goes to show that with the right governance

structures and recruitment process-es, and a lot of teamwork, you can go far.’ He added, ‘With time, the current era will come to be seen as a golden age in the history of sci-ence in Spain.’

The same highly demanding re-quirements, criteria, and assessment

and selection processes were used to determine the scientific excellence of both centres and smaller units. Both types of structures were se-lected based on their scientific per-formance and strategic programmes following a rigorous evaluation in which 115 renowned international scientists participated.

According to the Office of the Secretary of State for Research, Development, and Innovation, the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at UPF is one of the leading biomedical research units in Europe, with a remarkable portfolio of patents, start-ups, and spin-offs, a long list of global part-nerships, and an internationally renowned doctoral programme in biomedicine.

The department is considered to be one of the leading biomedical research units in europe

arcadi navarro, director of the Department of experimental and Health Sciences (DceXS), with carmen Vela, Spanish Secretary of State for research, Development, and innovation. OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPmENT, AND INNOVATION

The department of experimental and Health Sciences named a maria de maeztu unit of excellence

October 2015

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rin4’, scientific dissemination for a lay audience

#UPFResearch

#UPFTalent

‘les amigues de l’Àgata’ triumphs at multiple film festivals

The film, by Laia Alabart, Al-ba Cros, Laura Rius and Marta Verheyen, alumni of UPF’s Au-diovisual Communication pro-gramme, grew out of a final-year project for the programme. With the guidance of the filmmakers Isaki Lacuesta and Elias León Siminiani and the film critic Gonzalo de Lucas, all lectur-ers in the university’s Depart-ment of Communication, they won the audience award at the Barcelona International Auteur Film Festival (D’A). The show-ing was the only one to sell out. In light of its success, an addi-tional screening was arranged. The film also won the Abycine Indie award at the Albacete In-ternational Film Festival.

The debut effort by the four young filmmakers from UPF, made possible through crowd-funding, is about the gradual rift that occurs in a group of friends when they part ways to enrol at university. The film ranges

from their life in Barcelona to a trip to the Costa Bra-va, where the main char-acter, Àgata, begins to ex-

perience how the world she created with her child-

hood friends Car-la, Aria, and Mar is changing.

Still from the film.

Education

Strong performance by the first graduating class in medicine

Some 31% of the students ranked among the top 1,000 in terms of marks, and 71% ranked among the top 3,050 (the first quartile), in a year that saw nearly 12,000 candidates, one of the largest classes in recent times. The programme’s grad-uating class was moreover one of just four in all Spain in which 100% of the students who sat the exam outperformed the cut-off mark.

Joaquim Gea, dean of the Faculty of Health and Life Sci-ences at UPF, was very satisfied with the results, noting that ‘the largest share of our students were in the top 500’. This achievement bears witness to the soundness of the decision to launch the joint bachelor’s degree programme in Medicine with the Autonomous Univer-sity of Barcelona (UAB) in the 2008/2009 academic year. An in-teruniversity initiative, it pri-marily aims to produce versa-tile physicians able to practice their profession in a variety of fields.

UPf-Uab bachelor’s degree programme in Medicine, class of 2015. UPF

More than a hundred doctoral students at UPF participated in the Rin4’ competition, in which, in no more than four minutes, they had to present their doctoral research to a lay audience.

The panel of judges for the fi-nal round, made up of Núria Se-bastián, director of the UPF Doctor-al School, Emma Rodero, a lecturer in the Department of Communica-tion, and Mònica López-Ferrado, a scientific journalist for the news-paper Ara, awarded the first prize, consisting of 900, to Cristina Ga-lusca, for her explanation of the re-search she is conducting in the Rea-soning and Infant Cognition (RICO) research group in the Department of Information and Communication Technologies.

In the evaluation of each presen-tation, special emphasis was given to the clarity of the presentation, the context of the research, the degree of detail the candidates were able to convey in the limited time they had to work with, and the use of non-verbal resources and language. The audience also doubled as judg-es, voting on the best presentation.

The aim of the first edition of the doctoral competition, a ground-breaking initiative at academic in-stitutions in Spain, was to under-score the importance of young scientists’ communication skills with a view to narrowing the gap between scientific knowledge and the general public.

October 2015

cristina Galusca, winner of the rin4’ competition. UPF

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The new proposal, the first of its kind in the Spanish university sys-tem, got off to a strong start. A to-tal of 2.7 applications were received for each available place, with a cut-off mark for admission of 11.45. The other new programme this academic year, the double degree programme in Criminology and Public Preven-tion Policies and Law, was likewise well received, with a cut-off mark of 11.20. Overall, applications to UPF were up 6.6% from the previous aca-demic year, securing its position as the third most popular institution in the Catalan university system in terms of absolute demand as measured by stu-dents listing it as their first choice. This upwards trend can be seen in the cut-off marks, which increased for most programmes.

Special attention should be drawn to the bachelor’s degree programme in Philosophy, Politics and Econom-ics, offered jointly with the Alianza 4 Universidades (4 Universities Al-liance, A-4U), which saw a 30% in-crease in applications in its third year, resulting in a cut-off mark of 12.78, the

highest at UPF and the fourth high-est in the Catalan university system as a whole.

As for other recently launched programmes, the double degree programme in Law and Busi-ness Management and Adminis-tration or Economics is now firm-ly established, with a cut-off mark of 11.96 and some 2.48 applicants per place. Likewise, demand for the programme in International Business Economics climbed once again, pushing the cut-off mark up to 12.37, the third highest at UPF and the tenth highest in the Cata-lan system overall.

In addition to the newer degree programmes, attention should be called to the bachelor’s degree pro-gramme in Medicine, which once again registered the highest ratio of demand to supply (with 8.55 ap-plications per place) and had a cut-off mark of 12.63 (the sixth highest in the system). It is the most popu-lar degree programme in quanti-tative terms, with some 513 appli-cants listing it as their top choice.

Application period

Open degree programme popular among prospective students

Students on the ciutadella campus. UPf/freDeric caMallonGa

Strong showing at the interuniversity sport competitions

UPF (including the univer-sity’s affiliated centres) ended the 2014/2015 sport season on a high note, obtaining a total of 7 medals at the Spanish Uni-versity Championships and 29 medals at the Catalan Univer-sity Championships.

At the national level, the women’s beach handball team took the bronze at the Spanish University Championship held in Fuengirola.

With regard to individu-al sports, attention should be called to the strong performanc-es turned in by Judith Baeta, gold medallist in taekwondo (under 53 kg), and Marta Trillo, silver medallist in golf, in both the single and, along with Gon-zalo Acha, team events.

The remaining medals went to Alejandro Juárez, who took home the silver in taekwondo (under 54 kg), and the bronze medallists Lara Lucas (badmin-ton) and Guillem Valls (track and field, 400 m).

UPF was also the university with the highest participation in the Catalan University Cham-pionships, fielding a total of 17 teams. Two of them – women’s five-a-side football and wom-en’s beach football – placed first. The rest of the medal count for team sports was rounded out by the ultimate Frisbee, women’s beach handball, and men’s 3x3 basketball teams, all of which won silver medals.

With regard to individual competitions, UPF athletes ex-celled in sports as diverse as ju-do, track and field, swimming, table tennis, mountain racing, and chess.

#UPFTalent

October 2015

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UPFMón Debates

Social movements and civic engagement

dNa sequencing techniques improve the study of skeletal remains

#UPFResearch

Donations

The library expands its collection

With two donations formal-ized through assignment agree-ments.

First, Elena Rojas and Da-vid Trías, the widow and son of Eugenio Trías, the philosopher and UPF lecturer who passed away in 2013, assigned the Uni-versity his personal library and archive, in recognition of the creation of the Eugenio Trías Centre for Philosophical Stud-ies, coordinated by Fernando Pérez-Borbujo, a lecturer in the Department of Humanities. The assignment will have a term of ten years and may be renewed for equal periods.

The UPF Library considers the addition of these collections to be of great interest for the ex-pansion of its book and docu-mentary collections. Both are viewed as valuable assets for the study of and research into is-sues of philosophy and thought in general and Eugenio Trías’s work in particular.

Second, it has incorporated the collection of the Barcelona Institute for International Stud-ies (IBEI), consisting of some 1,500 volumes on topics related to political science and securi-

ty and international rela-tions, deemed to be of

considerable value for both teaching

and research.

Ferran Casals, head of the Genomics Service and a lectur-er in the Department of Exper-imental and Health Sciences at UPF; Jaume Bertranpetit and Francesc Calafell, researchers at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF); and As-sumpció Malgosa, a researcher in the Biological Anthropolo-gy Unit and head of the Oste-obiography Research Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), presented a groundbreaking forensic ge-netics study of remains from a Spanish Civil War mass grave.

The research, which was com-missioned by the Catalan Min-istry of Governance and Insti-tutional Relations, showed that ‘through the use of next-gener-ation sequencing technology, for the first time genetic studies of skeletal remains from the Span-ish Civil War could be conducted with extraordinarily good results, which opens the door to identify-ing these human remains with a high degree of reliability, includ-ing for up to second-degree kin’, explained Ferran Casals.

In this regard, Jaume Bertran-petit explained that, ‘This work opens up unprecedented possi-bilities to conduct a sufficient-ly broad study of the skeletal re-mains that have already been exhumed, as well as others that may be recovered in future. The methodology will make it possible to determine the precise identity of the people whose remains have been recovered.’ This technolo-gy, ‘in addition to being sensitive and effective, streamlines the pro-cesses and is much more cost-ef-fective’, Bertranpetit added.

The panel discussion, held on 19 March 2015 and organized by the UPF Board of Trustees, underscored the importance of empowering cit-izens and the role that social move-ments play in the current context.

Nearly 300 people followed the arguments and considerations of Muriel Casals, an economist and the former president of Òmnium Cultural; Ada Colau, a social activ-ist and founder of the Plataforma d’Afectats per la Hipoteca (Mort-gage Victims’ Platform, PAH), cur-rently the mayor of Barcelona; Itziar González, an architect and mem-ber of the driving force behind Par-lament Ciutadà (Citizens’ Parlia-ment); and Carles Ramió, a professor of political and administration sci-ence at UPF.

Núria Basi, president of the Board of Trustees, and Jaume Casa-ls, rector of UPF, were responsible for opening and closing the session, respectively. The journalist and UPF trustee Milagros Pérez Oliva pre-sented the panellists, calling them ‘clear components of the new civic power’, and moderated the subse-quent discussion.

The media’s power to set the political agenda, the characteris-tics of the new crop of leaders, the practical effects of empowering citizens and their entry into pol-itics, the feminization of politics (associated with concepts such as mediation, addition, and coopera-tion), and the electoral system and open lists were some of the topics discussed at the seventh edition of the UPF Món Debates series.

fernando Pérez-borbujo, elena rojas, Jaume casals, and David trías. UPF

itziar González and ada colau during the debate. UPF

October 2015

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The class of 2015, the year of the university’s 25th anniversary

Nearly 1,900 students from the class of 2015, the 22nd graduat-ing class at UPF, celebrated their graduation on 3 and 4 July in the company of family and friends at a ceremony that took place at the start of the events to commem-orate the university’s 25th anni-versary.

The graduation ceremony for the bachelor’s degree, master’s de-gree and doctoral students was held in the courtyard of the Roger de Llúria building on the Ciuta-della campus. Students went up on stage to receive their commem-orative diplomas over the course of six different sessions: two held on Friday, 3 July, and four on Sat-urday, 4 July.

The sessions could be streamed live on the institution-al website and were led by Jau-me Casals, the rector of UPF, and Núria Basi, president of the uni-versity’s Board of Trustees, a body that provided support for the act, as well as various vice-rectors and academic officials, includ-ing deans and the directors and heads of various centres and pro-grammes. The commencement addresses were given by the UPF lecturers Coloma Ballester, Núria Sebastián, Chelo Chacartegui, M. Àngels Fèlix, Dolors Oller, and Marta Reynal-Querol.

The event ended with a per-formance by the UPF chorus, which offered a rendition of

Gaudeamus igitur, the university song par

excellence.

#UPFGraduation2015

#UPFResearch

Technology to overcome communication challenges of immigrants

In Europe, migratory flows of people are on the rise. This situation is not without chal-lenges. Often, migrants to other countries face problems related to healthcare, isolation, or un-awareness of job opportunities, difficulties that stem from a lack of effective communication.

The European KRISTINA project (‘a knowledge-based information agent with social competence and human interac-tion capabilities’) was launched under the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme to tackle these chal-lenges from a technological per-spective. KRISTINA is coordi-nated by Leo Wanner, an ICREA researcher in the Department of Information and Commu-nication Technologies at UPF and the director of the Natural Language Processing Research Group (TALN).

The project’s primary aim is to research and develop technol-ogies run on mobile communica-tion devices to help immigrants become socially competent and able to communicate in the lan-guage of their country of resi-dence. The idea is especially designed to help these people overcome language and cultural barriers in their host country.

#UPFResearch

Interdisciplinary analysis of nuclear energy

September saw the launch of the HoNESt (History of Nuclear Energy and Society) project, co-ordinated by Albert Presas, a re-searcher in the History of Science Studies Research Group (GEHC) in the Department of Humanities. The project brings together 24 re-search institutions for the shared purpose of furthering our knowl-edge of the dynamics established between nuclear development and society in the last sixty years in more than 20 countries.

How civil society interacts with nuclear developments changes over time and depends on wheth-er this interaction is local, nation-al, or international. This research aims to cover the complexity of the political, technological, and eco-nomic challenges, and to grasp the state of affairs with regard to secu-rity, the perception of risk, commu-nication and the media, public en-gagement, social movements, etc.

The project offers a ground-breaking, interdisciplinary, and in-tegrated approach that will con-ceptually draw on large technical systems (LTSs) and the integrated sociotechnical system (IST), and which will forge close and innova-tive partnerships with historians and social scientists with exper-tise in the field. It will engage the key stakeholders in this discipline – industry, policymakers, and civil society – in a structured dialogue the results of which will be inserted into a public de-bate on nuclear energy.

Members of the KriStina project group. UPF

Students at graduation.

UPF

Page 23: UPF.EDU Nº10 (English)

October 2015 ·News· upf.edu 23

On 18 September, within the context of the events to commem-orate the university’s 25th anniver-sary, the Ciutadella campus hosted the first UPF Alumni party. Un-der the slogan ‘Torna a la Pom-peu’ (Come back to UPF), around a thousand former undergradu-ate and graduate students revisit-ed their time at the university and enjoyed a fun reunion.

The event kicked off with the panel discussion ‘La universitat: un camí d’anada i tornada’ (Univer-sity: a round trip), featuring UPF alumni from various fields. The dis-cussion was moderated by Aurora Masip, communications director for Banc de Sang i Teixits, and included Pau Agulló, founder and managing direc-tor of Kernel Ana-lytics; Nacho Corre-dor, communications and public affairs consultant at Llorente&Cuenca; Guillem d’Efak, director of the literary agency Car-men Balcells; Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, partner and founder at Ysios Cap-

ital Partners; and Montserrat Ven-drell, director of Biocat and Parc Científic de Barcelona. The second part of the event, of a more fes-tive nature, featured the presenta-tion of UPF’s 25th anniversary vid-eo and concluded with a concert by the group Boreals, whose mem-bers, Miquel Serra and the broth-ers Víctor and Xavier Paradís, are all UPF alumni.

UPF alumni: a primary focus of the 25th anniversary effortsUPF wants to use the anniver-sary to establish a fluid, perma-nent, and structural relationship with its alumni, who are its best

ambassadors to the world. It aims to do this by focusing on three main lines of action: consolidating and improving alum-ni services; increasing

alumni engagement in the educa-tion of current students; and, final-ly, launching a fundraising pro-gramme to allow them to contribute to the university’s sustainability.

#UPF25years

1,200 alumni participate in the 1st uPF alumni meeting

alumni are uPF’s best ambassadors to the world

european award for quality in internationalization

Recognition

The Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences at UPF has been awarded the CeQuInt cer-tificate, making it the first and only university in Spain to earn this credential, which is issued by 14 European accreditation agen-cies in recognition of the incorpo-ration of an international and in-tercultural dimension into higher education.

Awarded by the European Consortium for Accreditation, the quality distinction is given to programmes, centres, and aca-demic institutions that have suc-cessfully incorporated a high de-gree of internationalization into the purpose, function, and deliv-ery of their education.

Having faculty from more than 20 countries, teaching 67% of classes in English, taking the Bologna Process seriously, host-ing 350 foreign exchange students a year and sending out 300 of its own to participate in exchange programmes abroad, securing a total of 817 internship positions in the last academic year, and the strong reputation of all five of its degree programmes were all key to the faculty’s receipt of the Eu-ropean distinction.

The faculty itself has highlight-ed this achievement, as it serves to recognize the work done.

UPf alumni by the photo booth set up for the occasion. UPf/Mario Pérez

Àngel Gil, Josep ferrer and Martí casadesús. UPF

Page 24: UPF.EDU Nº10 (English)

— Why did you decide to study law?— When I was 17, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t a bad student, I was drawn to the humanities, I liked to write… I think that my plan, to the extent that I had one at all, was to study law and then, later, put in an additional two years to earn a journalism degree too. That would give me time to see whether I want-ed to be a lawyer or a journalist, or a writer or who knows what else? But what actual-ly happened is that, at university, I discov-ered theatre.

— How did this training help you in your career?— My favourite subject was phi-losophy of law. Basically, we stud-ied language and its ambivalence. Words don’t have just one meaning; we have to interpret them. Think-ing about language in this way has been very useful to me in my work as an actor, and also as a director. I think that, with a good text, you es-sentially have to question it. I began to learn that at the Faculty of Law.

— During your studies, you partic-ipated in the university’s Theatre Workshop. What memories do you have of that?— I have very fond memories of that. It is where I found my call-ing. Josep Maria Mestres, the work-shops’ director at the time, is largely responsible for that. He took me by the hand and guided me as I took my first steps. I can never be thankful enough to him for that. Also, it was a very strong group. Guillem Jordi Graells, a founding member of Teatre Lliure, gave classes there; Pere Planella, al-so from Teatre Lliure, taught a few classes... It was a real luxury!

When I was starting the third year of my programme, Mestres was preparing a play, Class Enemy. He needed very young actors and was holding auditions, basically, among

students from the Theatre Institute. He knew I was dying to give it a try, so he let me try out, and… that year I failed a lot of classes. And I was very happy.

— What advice would you give students in-terested in following this path? — I don’t like to give advice. To borrow from Goytisolo’s ‘Words for Julia’, I am still on my way. I think that theatre and, more broadly, acting are built on passion. It is a passion-ate choice. The years, the work, the profes-sional and life experiences will let you ex-perience this passion more deeply, let you answer some questions only to raise new

ones regarding your chosen path. If the flame dies out, it doesn’t make sense to keep insist-ing. I would tell them to ask themselves if this is really something they love. Or, better yet, have them discover that for themselves.

— Actor, director and playwright. Which hat do you like wearing best? — I like to act, and I like to direct. And I would like to have enough patience to be able to sit down and write with a certain degree of regularity, but, unfortunately, I

don’t. Or I don’t ‘yet’. Time will tell… I like being able to tell stories. I find it exciting. Because I like having stories told to me; it’s also something I find exciting.

— You have also held management posi-tions, such as the artistic director of Teatro Romea. What is it like to experience theatre from that perspective? — The responsibility weighed on me, and I wasn’t really able to enjoy it enough at the time. Now, though, I can see how much I learned. Handling the programming for a theatre forces you to look at things from a new and different perspective. In that sense,

I guess it helped broaden my under-standing of my profession.

— Today you are a very familiar (and renowned) face in Catalan theatre. What is that like for you? — The fact that people recognize you can be nice and it can be annoy-ing, but it’s not worth losing sleep over. Being recognized by people you care about or even admire, now that is a great gift. When it happens, you can’t help but feel pleased. I think I have been very lucky in my profession. I would have to be an idiot or just plain petty not to see that and feel grateful for it.

— You seem like someone who is always doing something. What are

you planning now? — Projects: Speed the Plow by David Ma-met, which, for the first time, I will be both acting in and directing. It will premiere at the Temporada Alta festival of performing arts in Girona, and will be at Teatre Borràs in November. In December and January, it’s back to King Lear, at Teatre Lliure. And in March, at the Teatre Nacional de Catalun-ya (TNC), I will be starring in Molière’s Don Juan, which will be directed by David Sel-vas. And, fortunately, a long etc.

‘I found my calling in UPF’s Theatre Workshop’

Julio Manrique(Law, 1995)

Actor, director and playwright

·Our Alumni·

LAFOTOGRàFICA