Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB)

The ICCUB is a research Institute of the Universitat de Barcelona, the first-ranked university in Spain (Shanghai ranking 2023). Our institute is one of the few centers in the world focused on an interdisciplinary study of the Cosmos from different physics areas: cosmology, astrophysics, high-energy physics, gravitation, nuclear and atomic physics, instrumentation and quantum sciences and technologies.

Created in 2006, it brought together researchers from various departments at the UB Faculty of Physics, encouraging them to explore connections in their research and increasing their collaborations and synergies. Since then the Institute has significantly strengthened its research excellence and internationalization.

Institute of Cosmos Sciences - University of Barcelona

Excellence and recognition awards

2014 - “María de Maeztu Center of Excellence Seal” by the Ministry of Research, Development and Innovation of Spain

2019 - “María de Maeztu Center of Excellence Seal” by the Ministry of Research, Development and Innovation of Spain

Ranking positioning

The ICCUB is a research Institute of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). The UB is the first-ranked university in Spain in several rankings:

2024 - THE (Times Higher Education) World University Rankings

2023 -Shanghai ranking

2023 - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

2022 - National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU Ranking)

Director of the center

Xavier Luri Carrascoso

Director of the ICCUB since June 2018 and full professor at the Quantum Physics and Astrophiscs department of UB, where he is co-leading the main Spanish group participating in the Gaia mission.

He combines the teaching duties for undergraduate and graduate students with the research activity, and has directed 7 PhD theses.

Coordinator of the SPACIOUS project funded with 1.9 million Euros by the European Union's Horizon Europe programme to address strategic research issues in astrophysics.

His research activity is focused on ESAs Gaia mission, where he was one of the proposers of the mission and has been a member of the executive committee of the data reduction consortium of Gaia (DPAC) since its creation in 2006.

Member of the Astronomy and Fundamental Physics Panel of the European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) since 2022.

Renowned researcher

Licia Verde

Dr. Licia Verde has been an ICREA professor at the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics of the University of Barcelona since 2007, and she is a member of the Cosmology and Large-Scale Structures research group at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB), specifically focusing on Observational Cosmology.
Her team seeks to find explanations for some of the open questions in cosmology, such as what is dark energy? Or what caused the primordial perturbations of the universe?
She is editor and Scientific director of Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).
She has received several prizes and distinctions along her career, among which we highlight the Rei Jaume I Prize for Basic Research in 2021 or the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with the WMAP team.
She obtained her PhD as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, UK.

The project

Quantum Entanglement and Superposition: How Quantum Mechanics helps us understand our Universe

Entanglement and superposition are two of the most fascinating phenomena in the quantum realm and they are key to the revolution of quantum technologies.

Participants will explore these mind-bending concepts through different challenges: Developing computer simulations, building an experimental setup, testing the results and attending advanced demonstrations.

By providing hands-on experiences and expert guidance, we empower students to grasp the fundamentals of this cutting-edge field, inspiring the next generation of quantum enthusiasts!

More about the project