The CERN Quantum Technology Initiative (CERN QTI) has defined a roadmap and research programme in collaboration with its advisory board, as well as the high-energy physics and quantum-technology research communities

The initiative is part of a collaboration with the artist Blanca Pujals and is supported by CCCB and Hangar.

The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission has released its first set of survey data, offering a glimpse into its deep fields. IFAE and PIC contribute to the development of Euclid’s instrumentation, data processing, and scientific analysis.

The DESI collaboration published a new analysis of dark energy using their first three years of collected data, which spans nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars. This analysis combined the DESI data with information from studies of the cosmic microwave background, supernovae, and weak gravitational lensing. The standard model of cosmology struggles to explain all the observations when taken together — but a model where dark energy’s influence changes over time seems to fit the data well.

Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has led to the clearest and most precise images yet of the universe’s infancy, the cosmic microwave background radiation that was visible only 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Due to IFAE’s participation in observatories that study galaxy distribution—such as DES, Euclid, and DESI—its researchers can leverage the new ACT maps in a unique way.

Tyann Dumerchat joined the Observational Cosmology group as a postdoctoral researcher

Researchers from the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) in Barcelona are among the thousands of researchers worldwide honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) alongside its sister experiments ALICE, CMS and LHCb.

IFAE has been awarded the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation for the third time, recognizing its international leadership in fundamental physics research. The distinction includes €4.5 million over four years to support its strategic scientific programme and talent development.

Andreu Font presented new DESI results on Baryon Acoustic Oscillations at Harvard, raising questions about the ΛCDM model and the constancy of the cosmological constant.

Sakshi Satish Madekar joined the Gravitational Waves group as a PhD student

Joaquim Matias has been awarded the 2024 ICREA Acadèmia. The announcement was made this week following the resolution of the ICREA Acadèmia 2024 call, managed by AGAUR.

On 30-12-2024 the IFAE COVID-19 group published in Scientific Reports from the Nature Multidisciplinary Collections its second and final paper ‘An Agent-Based Simulation of COVID-19 History in Catalonia Using Extensive Real Datasets’. The study highlights the impact of non-pharmaceutical measures and vaccination on COVID-19 spread in Catalonia.