6 new people have joined the CRM in several capacities during the last two months.
In February and March we have welcomed several new people that have joined the CRM to work both at the research support team and the CRM research staff. Below you can find a short presentation of each one.
Irene Spelta
Postdoctoral Researcher
Irene is a Maria de Maeztu postdoctoral fellow working in the group of Juan Carlos Naranjo (UB-CRM). Previously, she was a postdoc at the University of Pavia funded by the Italian Institute of Mathematics (INdAM). There she worked in the group of Paola Frediani. Moreover, she spent some months as a postdoctoral researcher at IMUB. She obtained her PhD at the University of Pavia in 2020. Her research interests lie in Algebraic Geometry. In particular, she studies moduli of curves and of abelian varieties.
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Neus Pou
Research technician
Neus studied the degree in Biomedical Sciences at the Universitat de Barcelona and the master’s in bioinformatics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is working in the Computational Neuroscience group with Alex Hyafil since September. She has collaborated in other neuroscience research groups: in the Neurophysiology group at the UIB (Balearic Islands), in the Circadian Rhythms and Metabolism group at the Institute of Cellular and Integrative Neurosciences in Strasbourg (France) and in the UPF Neuropharmacology group.
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Patricia Alves
Accountant
Patricia started working at CRM as a Technician in the Accounting and Finance department. Her academic background is: Higher Degree in International Trade (IES Jaume Mimó, Cerdanyola del Vallès), Diploma in Labour Relations (UAB) and Official Master’s Degree in Social and Labour Rights (UAB). Her professional career began at the University Institute of European Studies (2009-2012), a research center located at the UAB.
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Clara Cufí
Scientific Software Developer
Clara graduated in Mathematics and Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and then moved to the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) to complete a MSc in Advanced Mathematics. She obtained a PhD in Mathematics by the UAB in February 2023, with a PhD thesis entitled “Contributions to the study of periodic orbits and invariant manifolds in dynamical systems”. During her PhD studies she participated in the organization of seminars and workshops for young researchers, some of them hosted by the CRM.
On March 2023 she joined the CRM as a Scientific Software Developer at the Knowledge Transfer Unit.
Profile
Pau Costa
Scientific Activities Manager
Pau studied Physics in Universitat de Barcelona, majoring in Applied Physics. During the last year he was a laboratory assistant in the MIND research group with Dr. Juan Marcos Fernández Pradas as part of an internship and final degree project. He also studied a Postgraduate in Scientific Communication at the University of Vic, coordinated by Eduscopi.
His work experience is diverse, having worked as a private teacher and a basketball coach, but he also has experience in consulting for R+D+i projects and in a scientific communication agency. Now, Pau is part of the Scientific Activities Management Team here at CRM.
Profile
Pau Reig
Scientific Software Developer
Pau graduated in Physics (BSc) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), where he is currently persuing a MSc Degree in Modelling for Science and Engineering while working as a scientific software developer at CRM. He also has interest and passion for music, in which he is ending the professional degree in jazz (electric bass) at Conservatori del Liceu.
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CRM Comm Team
Anna Drou | Pau Varela
CRMComm@crm.cat
Jagged walls and unknown edges: a workshop on free boundary problems
From 2 to 6 November, the Workshop on Free Boundary Problems brought together more than fifty registered participants from institutions in eleven countries at the CRM. Over five days they heard 21 talks on elliptic and parabolic free boundaries and on geometric measure theory and harmonic analysis in rough domains, with speakers including Guy David, Svitlana Mayboroda, Susanna Terracini and Robin Neumayer. The workshop was the second intensive week of the Intensive Research Programme on Analysis of Free Boundary Problems, which continues at the CRM until 4 December.
The CRM exhibition ‘Les matemàtiques de Gaudí’ moves to the University of Barcelona
After its October run at the UAB, the exhibition Les matemàtiques de Gaudí, produced by the CRM, can be seen at the University of Barcelona’s CRAI Biblioteca de Matemàtiques i Informàtica from 2 to 30 November 2026.
Advanced Course on Free Boundary Problems Opens the Intensive Weeks of the IRP
From 26 to 30 October, around forty researchers attended the Advanced Course on Free Boundary Problems at the CRM, three seven-hour mini-courses given by Bozhidar Velichkov (Università di Pisa), Max Engelstein (University of Minnesota) and Zihui Zhao (Johns Hopkins University). The course was the first of the two intensive weeks of the Intensive Research Programme on Analysis of Free Boundary Problems, which runs until 4 December.
El CRM rep els estudiants de la prova de nivell de Bojos per les Matemàtiques 2027
Els aspirants a Bojos per les Matemàtiques 2027 van visitar el Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) dissabte 24 d’octubre, després de fer la prova de nivell a la Facultat de Ciències i Biociències de la UAB. En acabat, Tomás Sanz (UB-CRM) els va explicar què té a veure l’escalfament d’una barra de ferro amb els àudios de WhatsApp.
Eight CRM Researchers in the 2026 Stanford-Elsevier List of Highly Cited Scientists
The Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) has eight researchers in the 2026 update of the Stanford-Elsevier ranking of highly cited scientists, which John P. A. Ioannidis (Stanford University) and Jeroen Baas (Elsevier) compile from Scopus data. Xavier Cabré, Álvaro Corral, Tim Myers, Xavier Ros-Oton, Sergey Tikhonov and Xavier Tolsa appear both in the career-long ranking and in the one for 2025, and Diego Vidaurre and Simeon Ball in the 2025 ranking.
Fish schools and growing tissues: a workshop on how collective behaviour emerges
The Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) organised the Barcelona Workshop on Kinetic and Macroscopic Models in Biology with Friends II, held from 7 to 10 September at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. More than thirty researchers discussed how order at the scale of tissues and animal groups arises from local interactions between individuals, in a programme that included talks by CRM researchers Daria Stepanova and Juan Arellano-Tintó. Two of the speakers, James Sharpe (EMBL Barcelona) and Chiara Villa (CNRS, Université Paris Cité), talked to the CRM about their research.
The CRM opens the academic year and unveils its Directors’ Gallery
A review of the year, the Communication Plan 2026–2030 and three research talks filled the morning of 19 October.The unveiling of the Directors’ Gallery.CRM CommPau VarelaCRMComm@crm.catGet the latest CRM news and activities in your inbox.Recent...
The CRM Mentoring Programme, as Told by One of Its Pairs
PhD student Joaquim Duran and mathematician Robert Cardona, one of the pairs in the CRM Mentoring ProgrammeJoaquim Duran (left) and Robert Cardona.CRM CommPau VarelaCRMComm@crm.catGet the latest CRM news and activities in your inbox.Recent...
When the reward comes within reach, the brain changes what it compares
As the tokens piled up, choices got faster and more accurate at the same time. The yardstick for judging each offer had moved.CRM CommPau VarelaCRMComm@crm.catGet the latest CRM news and activities in your inbox.Recent newsletters →Two subjects...
Almost every automaton can be reset with a short word
Guillaume Chapuy (Université Paris Cité, CNRS) and Guillem Perarnau (UPC, CRM) have shown that a random finite automaton with n states can, with high probability, be reset by a word of length of order √n log n. The result, published in ACM Transactions on Algorithms, pins the exponent at 1/2, the lower end of a decade of numerical estimates, and addresses the random version of the synchronization problem behind a conjecture Ján Černý posed in 1964 and which still remains open.
Exposició ‘Les matemàtiques de Gaudí’
