The research ecosystem at the forefront of the fight against Covid

The positioning of Barcelona and Catalonia as research ecosystems in the biomedical field have made our territory a point of reference in the fight against Covid. Since the start of the pandemic, many research centers have reoriented their research to find answers to the health crisis that affects everyone in different areas: new therapies, vaccines and prevention methods, genetic studies and preventive studies.

Furthermore, world-class scientific equipment has made its capacity available for the fight against Covid. Thus, on the one hand, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center collaborates in the fight against the coronavirus in aspects such as the application of bioinformatics for research on the virus and its possible treatments or the use of artificial intelligence and the processing of natural language and big data techniques to analyze data on the spread and impact of the epidemic. On the other hand, the Synchrotron Alba, the particle accelerator located in Cerdanyola del Vallès, has established a protocol to prioritize the use of the facilities to research lines linked to the fight against the pandemic.

All this adds to the different initiatives that have been carried out by administrations, companies, civil society and citizens to face the current health crisis, demonstrating the collaborative spirit of our territory and marking the way for the progressive recovery of the activity for the next few months.