The Sant Pau Research Institute (IR Sant Pau) has received new national funding from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), an agency under the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. This is through the 2025 Call for Grants for the Preparation and Management of European Projects and for Facilitating the Attraction of International Talent. This support will help consolidate and expand the structure of the European Projects Office (OPE) and is aligned with the institute’s strategy to strengthen its presence in the Horizon Europe program, articulated through the plan “Horizon Sant Pau: Enhancing Excellence and Innovation in Horizon Europe”, which guides the center’s main lines of international growth.
According to Noemí Carranza, head of the OPE, “this grant represents a decisive step toward further professionalizing our internationalization structure and better supporting research groups in preparing competitive proposals. Recently we have made great progress, but the demand for support continues to grow. Having a more robust structure allows IR Sant Pau to consolidate its leadership in Horizon Europe and open new opportunities for our research talent to participate in high-impact projects.”
The awarded grant amounts to €145,889.00, which will be used to promote advanced training in European programs, improve digital tools for analyzing funding opportunities, and strengthen technical support in preparing competitive proposals.
Lately, IR Sant Pau has experienced sustained growth in its international activity. The creation of the OPE in 2021 marked a turning point: the number of proposals submitted to European programs has increased significantly, financial returns have risen substantially. In 2024, the institute obtained, for the first time, a coordinated Horizon Europe project with €7 million in funding, of which more than €1 million is allocated to the institute. In addition, researchers at the center have secured eight projects funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in just three years, strengthening the diversification of its international portfolio and providing essential structural resources to support scientific management.
This progress has been consolidated thanks to a clear institutional commitment to internationalization, reflected in IR Sant Pau’s 2025–2030 strategy. This roadmap sets as priority objectives the strengthening of scientific leadership in Europe, the attraction of international talent, and the reinforcement of alliances with institutions, companies, and strategic networks. The new funding will deepen this direction by enabling intensive training programs, specialized workshops, coordinated proposal-preparation activities, and new semantic analysis tools that will facilitate the reading and interpretation of European work programs.
Strengthening the OPE will also improve internal coordination among the units involved in international projects, from innovation to clinical trials. It will also expand support for the clinical groups of Hospital de Sant Pau, from which a large portion of the institute’s research staff originates. This integration is essential to increase the quality, maturity, and robustness of proposals submitted to Horizon Europe, particularly in strategic areas such as neurosciences, cardiovascular research, hematology, oncology, and advanced therapies.
This new national grant adds to a solid trajectory of funding that has allowed IR Sant Pau to build and consolidate its international structure. In 2022, the institute received a national grant of €174,986.30 through the call for Preparation and Management of European Projects, allocated for the 2023–2024 period and extended until September 2025. This funding enabled staff expansion, stronger internal training, and improvements in analytical and research-support tools.
Additionally, the regional program Go Europe awarded IR Sant Pau €299,940, extended until June 2026. This support funds specialized human resources, technological platforms, partner-search tools, and networking and training activities—key elements for consolidating a professional and stable model of European project management.
Thanks to this trajectory, IR Sant Pau now has a mature structure that combines specialized technical staff, solid work procedures, advanced digital platforms, and an expanding network of national and international collaborations. The new funding allows the institute to take another step forward, strengthening its capacity to lead high-impact projects, attract competitive funding, and transfer knowledge for of the healthcare system and society.
