The Laureates’ Colloquium was held, where they explained their different projects and the reasons why they were awarded the prize to an audience of over a hundred people.

The first speaker was José Luis Mascareñas, winner of the Basic Research Prize, for whom “catalysis processes make our lives much better.” The Galician researcher confessed that “We have been pioneers in metal catalysis, which is a field that is just beginning.”

The second speaker was Jan Eeckhout, representing Economy 2025, for whom “Our research focuses on understanding the relationship between monopoly companies and the rest of the economy, and we study three effects: on the labor market, on startups, and on inequalities.”

The winner in Biomedical Research, biologist Nuria López-Bigas, said that her research focuses on “identifying all the genes with mutations that cause cancer and generating algorithms that identify the patterns that warn us of cancer.”

For anthropologist Victoria Reyes, winner of the Environmental Protection Prize, her work consists of “examining the interactions between people and the environment, with two lines of research: one is how indigenous knowledge can help us protect the environment, and the other is the integration of perceptions of climate change.

For María Jesús Vicent, winner of the New Technologies Prize, “our research focuses on how to deliver the active ingredients of drugs to their destination, crossing biological barriers that could prevent this.”

On the other hand, for the winner of the Business Revelation Prize, Damià Tormo, “in Spain, there is no shortage of scientific ideas in our research centers, but rather ways to transfer them to business.” After creating hundreds of companies, Tormo formed Columbus as an ecosystem “capable of promoting science and demonstrating that here we also do science that changes the world,” emphasized the entrepreneur.

Finally, Silvia de Sanjosé spoke about her work: “The research focuses on identifying the cause of the human papillomavirus and finding out what causes the disease. We have managed to vaccinate children earlier to prevent them from developing the disease,” said De Sanjosé, winner of the Clinical Research and Public Health Prize.