ISGlobal Receives the Visit of its New External Advisory Committee

 On November 13 and 14, ISGlobal, an institution supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, received the visit of its new External Advisory Committee (EAC), whose mission is to evaluate the institute’s activities and achievements and its strategic plan for the period 2017-2020). 

“This is a crucial moment for the institution” says general director Antoni Plasència, “since it is the first evaluation since the merger with CREAL”. “In order to guarantee a comprehensive evaluation of all the areas, the EAC has been partly renewed and integrates members from the previous advisory committees, but also incorporates new members”, explains Josep M. Antó, ISGlobal’s scientific director.

The new EAC is integrated by 14 leading national and international experts, and is co-chaired by David Savitz from Brown University and Marcel Tanner from Basel University. Both chairs agreed that, in this time of great changes, the Committee’s role is to provide constructive advice to help ISGlobal “move ahead as one institution and maximise its impact”. In order to replace the committee members that could not assist, two additional experts were invited.       

In his introduction lecture, Plasència thanked the Committee members for their time and effort, as well as the ISGlobal staff who helped prepare the visit. He made a brief overview of the institution and milestones, and outlined the five objectives of the strategic plan: consolidate the institution, reinforce its scientific excellence, educate and learn for the future, guarantee its sustainability, and work for and with the people. In turn, Antó presented the 9 research programmes proposed as building blocks for the research area, and highlighted the challenges and solutions to reinforce excellence for impact. 

Throughout two days – the first one in Campus Clinic and the second one in Campus Mar – the EAC attended plenary and parallel sessions in which the different research programmes and the training and policy and global development departments presented their main results and future goals. They also met with the researchers, including group leaders, postdoctoral and predoctoral fellows and technicians.  

Within a couple of weeks, the EAC will send its final report which, as in previous occasions, includes a series of valuable recommendations for the institute’s strategic development.       

CERCA Evaluation

On November 15, ISGlobal also underwent the CERCA evaluation, which takes place every four to five years for all centres belonging to the Catalan Research Centres (CERCA) Network.