The President receives Ikerbasque researchers who have joined Ikerbasque during 2023

• 40 scientists from all areas of expertise joined Ikerbasque in 2023, 10 are of Basque origin. Today, 26 attended the recognition ceremony.

• Ikerbasque currently has 375 researchers. All of them with international experience, from 35 countries, who have joined Basque universities and R&D centres.

 The President, Iñigo Urkullu, this afternoon presided over the presentation of the recognition to a group of researchers from all fields of expertise who will carry out their work in the universities and research centres of the Basque Country in the coming years through Ikerbasque. The event was also attended by Jokin Bildarratz, Minister of Education, Fernando Cossío, scientific director of Ikerbasque and representatives of the Department of Education and the Basque Science System.

The Ikerbasque programmes pursue a clear objective of attracting and retaining talent — on the one hand, it is about attracting those who are developing their research work abroad, with special emphasis on the return of research personnel from the Basque Country who at some point in their careers went abroad — and on the other hand, offering opportunities to consolidate the career path of those who are already researching in the Basque Country. Of the 26 researchers who today received recognition from the President, 10 are Basques, who have either returned to the Basque Country through these programmes or have managed to consolidate their research position.

The Research Professor call is aimed at established researchers with extensive international experience and leadership capacity. Through this call in 2023, 6 new recruits have been incorporated, including Marcin Balcerzyk, PhD in Physics from the Soltan Institute of Nuclear Studies in Poland who, after several stays at research centres in the USA and Europe, has joined Bioaraba where he will research on the improvement of cancer treatments through proton therapy techniques.

The Research Fellow programme is an initiative specifically designed to attract and keep young experts in various fields of expertise in the Basque Country, with the aim of creating a pool of researchers. Thanks to the Research Fellow program, 14 people joined in 2023, including Amaia Carrión. Born in Donostia, she carried out her doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, Netherlands) on the genetic basis of dyslexia. She is currently researching the relationship between genes and the brain and reading at the BCBL Basque Centre for Brain, Language and Cognition.

These two calls are completed with the Research Associate programme, which aims to be a bridge between these two categories so that Ikerbasque can cover the different stages of a research career by completing the existing offers to young researchers and to people who are already established in their scientific career. 6 people have been incorporated this year through this programme.

Ikerbasque currently has 375 researchers, including Research Professors (190), Research Associates (95) and Research Fellows (90), who have been incorporated into the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation System. Universities and R&D centres in the Basque Country are benefiting from the contributions of experts in the most diverse fields, ranging from experimental sciences to the humanities, including medicine, technical and engineering studies and social sciences.

Ikerbasque is the result of an initiative of the Basque Government that aims to reinforce the commitment to scientific research that has been carried out for years by the administrations, universities and companies of the autonomous community and that was reflected when preparing the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Plan. In order to contribute to this effort to position the Basque Country among the most relevant powers in R&D&I, the fundamental axis of Ikerbasque’s activities is to serve as a hub for attracting research talent.