Month: June 2023

First Advisory Council Board of the new foundation

Posted on by Laura

  • Up to three Nobel Laureates form part of the new committee that will guide the scientific direction of the Foundation’s awards, which are now up and running

The first meeting of the Advisory Council Board of the new Foundation – formed following the merger of the three foundations that previously shared premises on Calle Pintor López in Valencia – has taken place.

The Fundación Valenciana Premios Rei Jaume I held its first meeting with its 10-member Advisory Committee, three of whom are Nobel Laureates: Roger Kornberg (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006) as vice-chair, Eric Maskin (Nobel Prize in Economics 2007) and Randy Schekman (Nobel Prize in Medicine 2013). The remaining members of this committee will comprise current recipients of the Rei Jaume I Prize: María Blasco, José Capmany, Eugenio Coronado, Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, Ángela Pérez and María Vallet. In accordance with the statutes, the Board will be chaired by the executive president of the Awards and will meet twice a year.

The Council will examine proposals and suggestions for improving the Awards, which are routinely put forward by members of the prestigious jury panels, the Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the scientific and business communities in Spain, with the aim of maintaining the Awards’ reputation and increasing their social visibility.

“With this initiative, the Rei Jaume I Prizes’ commitment to promoting science and entrepreneurship in Spain is extended for at least another 35 years through a new project dedicated to strengthening greater collaboration between science, technology and business,” said Javier Quesada, executive chairman, “These are the three pillars that underpin and drive progress in the world’s most advanced nations.”

Avelino Corma, winner of the Rei Jaume I Prize for New Technologies in 2000 and the European Inventor Award for Lifetime Achievement

Posted on by Laura

The 2000 jury, which met in Altea and comprised four Nobel Laureates from that year, unanimously awarded him the prize “for his contribution to the development of innovative catalytic technologies”

The European Patent Office (EPO) announced this morning that it is awarding the 2023 European Inventor Award for Lifetime Achievement to Avelino Corma, winner of the Rei Jaume I New Technologies Prize in 2000, the first award in this category, a researcher at the Institute of Chemical Technology (ITQ), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), for his extraordinary career in the field of chemistry, which has now spanned more than three decades. Corma has dedicated his life to developing more sustainable chemical processes and catalysts. The OEP will pay tribute to him during the Awards Ceremony, which will be broadcast live and is due to take place on 4 July.

Born in Moncofa (Castellón) in 1951, Avelino Corma is a distinguished researcher at the UPV and founder of the Institute of Chemical Technology (ITQ, CSIC – Polytechnic University of Valencia).  The 2000 jury, which met in Altea that year, unanimously decided to award him this prize “for his contribution to the development of innovative catalytic technologies aimed at achieving more efficient and less polluting chemical processes, with significant industrial applications worldwide”, stated the jury, comprising four Nobel Laureates out of the 17 who came to the Valencian Community that year to serve as judges for these awards

He is an internationally recognised expert in acidic and bifunctional solid catalysts applied to petroleum refining, petrochemicals and chemical processes, particularly in the synthesis and application of zeolites. He has published just over 1,200 articles in international journals and has written three books. Furthermore, he is the author of 200 patents, of which just over twenty are in use and are currently applied in industrial processes that help to fund the ITQ’s activities.

The European Inventor Award is one of Europe’s most prestigious innovation prizes. Launched in 2006, the award honours individuals and teams who have provided solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time. The finalists and winners are selected by an independent jury comprising former finalists of the award. Together, they assess the entries for their contribution to technical progress, social and sustainable development, and economic prosperity.

 With 6,300 employees, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of Europe’s largest public service institutions. It is headquartered in Munich and has offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna.

RNE’s programme “No es un día cualquiera”, presented by Pepa Fernández, is being broadcast from Valencia to mark the announcement of the prizes winners

Posted on by Laura

  • The public radio programme – which has been on air for 21 years – interviewed two winners of the Rei Jaime I Prizes for Research, Science and Entrepreneurship

Over the weekend of 17 and 18 June, the RNE programme “No es un día cualquiera” was broadcast live from the CaixaForum Valencia premises in the Ágora building at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (CAC)

Journalist Pepa Fernández interviewed, amongst others, the winner of the Biomedical Research award, Guillermina López-Bendito – whose name was announced last week – and the 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year, Ángela Pérez, as well as the Executive President, Javier Quesada.

To listen again to the interview with Ángela Pérez from Sunday 18 June, you can hear it here: https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/no-es-un-dia-cualquiera/ in the fourth hour, at 24:20.

And the interview with Guillermina López-Bendito can be found at https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/no-es-un-dia-cualquiera/, in the fourth hour of the programme on 17 June at 23:02.

This programme has visited all the Spanish capital cities and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and, interestingly, its first trip – in 1999 – was to the Comunitat Valenciana (Crevillent).

This marks the sixth year in a row that the programme has visited our city for the Jury Meetings that select the six winners each year.

The programme is broadcast live from 8.30 am to 1.00 pm. Admission to the auditorium will be free (no invitation required) until full capacity is reached.

If you’d like to watch our video:

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Echavarren, Bover, López-Benito, Escutia, Maspoch and Jiménez, winners of the 35th edition

Posted on by Laura
  • Three of the six award winners this year are women

This morning, the juries for the Rei Jaume I Prizes selected the winners across the six categories into which the prizes are divided. The winners of the Rei Jaume I Prizes were announced at a formal ceremony at the Palau de la Generalitat, presided over by the acting head of the Consell, Ximo Puig, and attended by the executive president, Javier Quesada, as well as the president of the Valencian Foundation for the Rei Jaume I Prizes, Vicente Boluda.
The ceremony at the Palau de la Generalitat was attended by the trustees of the Valencian Foundation
for the Rei Jaume I Prizes, the juries for the six categories, as well as representatives from
the partners: the Iberdrola Spain Foundation for Environmental Protection, Valencia City Council
for New Technologies, Air Liquide Healthcare and CaixaBank for
Biomedical Research, and Mercadona, Edem and AVE for the Entrepreneur Prize. In addition, the
Awards are supported by organisations such as the Port Authority of Valencia, Boluda
Corporación Marítima, the Council of Chambers of the Comunidad Valenciana, the Banco Santander Foundation
, Pavasal, RNB, SPB, the Vectalia Group, CEV, the Provincial Council of Valencia,
Logifruit, the Torrecid Foundation, BP, the Segura-Balpa Group, the Alicante Provincial Council, Empresas del Sol, as well as institutional backing from the Generalitat
Valenciana.
The winners are:

  • Antonio Echavarren Pablos, in the Basic Research category
  • Olympia Bover Hidiroglu, in Economics
  • Guillermina López-Bendito, in Biomedical Research
  • Carlota Escutia Dotti, in Environmental Protection
  • Daniel Maspoch Comamala, in the New Technologies category
  • Alfonso Jiménez Rodríguez-Vila, in the Entrepreneur Prize

The juries of the Rei Jaume I Prizes have called for the responsible use of artificial intelligence technology

Posted on by Laura

“In light of the natural concern with which society has viewed scientific and technological advances in the past, the juries for the 35th edition of the Rei Jaume I Prizes call for the opportunities offered by the responsible use of AI to be seized, without ignoring or downplaying the risks posed by its misuse.” This is the key message contained in the 2023 Declaration, a manifesto signed each year by the hundred or so members who make up the juries of the Rei Jaume I Prizes, with the aim of drawing attention to issues of great significance to society.

As the manifesto states, in recent months there has been growing concern about the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and its potentially dangerous consequences for the transformation of people’s lives.

“However, like all previous technological revolutions, AI offers great opportunities to improve people’s lives, as has already been demonstrated by numerous Rei Jaume I Prize winners in previous years, whose scientific and technological advances would not have been possible without the use of AI”.

Furthermore, the signatories conclude that “Consequently, we must allow, trust and invest in new developments in AI that enable us to push the frontiers of knowledge at a faster pace and thus help to resolve, as soon as possible, the major problems affecting humanity”.

Start of the deliberations

Once the manifesto had been read out, the six meetings began – one for each award category – to select the winners in the categories of Basic Research, Economics, Biomedical Research, Environmental Protection, New Technologies and Entrepreneur.

At 1.30 pm at the Palau de la Generalitat, during a ceremony chaired by the acting President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, the winners of the 35th edition of the Rei Jaume I Prizes were announced.

In addition to the support of the Generalitat Valenciana, the Rei Jaume I Prizes benefit from the collaboration of various organisations and companies that make this recognition of science, research and business possible, such as the Iberdrola Spain Foundation in the Environmental Protection category,Valencia City Council in the New Technologies Prize category, Air Liquide Healthcare and CaixaBank in the Biomedical Research category, and Mercadona, Edem and AVE in the Entrepreneur Prize. The Awards are supported by organisations such as the Port Authority of Valencia, Boluda Corporación Marítima, the Council of Chambers of the Comunidad Valenciana, the Banco Santander Foundation, Pavasal, RNB, SPB, the Vectalia Group, CEV, the Provincial Council of Valencia, Logifruit, the Torrecid Foundation, the Alicante Provincial Council, BP, the Segura-Balpa Group, and Empresas del Sol.

The Nobel Laureates, who sit on the jury for our awards, are visiting the Region

Posted on by Laura

As is the case every year, as part of the Jury Meeting for the Rei Jaume I Prizes, the 21 Nobel Laureates attending the event as members of the jury take part in a programme of visits to research centres and universities, amongst other venues.

The aim of this initiative is to offer students and research staff the opportunity to share their research and get to know these leading scientists at first hand

The lectures and meetings took place on Monday morning, and the visits were to:

University of Valencia and Polytechnic University of Valencia:

            > Institute of Molecular Science. Jean Pierre Sauvage and Jean-Marie Lehn.

            > Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC). Anton Zeilinger and Klaus Von Klitzing.

> UV-UPV Inter-University Institute for Molecular Recognition and Technological Development. Bernard Feringa.

            > Faculty of Economics. Edmund S. Phelps

            > Institute of Instrumentation for Molecular Imaging (I3M). Serge Haroche.

            > Institute of Chemical Technology (ITQ). Morten Meldal

            > Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM). Sheldon Lee Glashow.

            > Institute of Integrative Systems Biology. Roger Kornberg.

Jaume I University

            > Vice-Chancellor’s Office. Barry Barish.

            > Doctoral School. Aaron Ciechanover.

Generalitat Valenciana

            > FISABIO. Erwin Neher and Jules Hoffman.

            > LA FE RESEARCH CENTRE. Randy Scheckman.

            > INCLIVA/Faculty of Medicine. Avram Hershko.

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

            > Valencia Institute of Biomedicine (IBV). Richard Roberts.

            > Institute of Neurosciences (IN). Ardem Patapoutian.

Prince Felipe Research Centre. Joachim Frank.

EDEM. School of Business. Eric S. Maskin.

Información newspaper (Alicante). Finn Erling Kydland.

University of Alicante

            > Faculty of Economics. Finn Erling Kydland.

Following the lectures, the Nobel Laureates attended a lunch with a group of university students at the Awards’ venue, which this year was the Hotel Las Arenas in Valencia. Afterwards, the programme concluded with a series of discussions with the students to exchange experiences.

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