SOMMa 2025: scientific excellence management comes to Donostia
Over 70 project management heads from centers accredited with the Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu seals of excellence will be participating in this meeting. The meeting is being organized by the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), CIC nanoGUNE, the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), and POLYMAT, cutting-edge centers in the local scientific ecosystem.
Donostia is hosting the SOMMa 2025 project management meeting, organized by four benchmarks in local scientific excellence: the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), CIC nanoGUNE, the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and POLYMAT. These centers, recognized by the Basque Government as knowledge infrastructures and accredited as Cooperative Research Centers (CIC) or Basic Excellence Research Centers (BERC), stand out for their leadership in frontier science and their contribution to the international scientific ecosystem. The meeting is bringing together over 70 project management heads from research centers and units accredited with the Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu Seals of Excellence (CEX) from across Spain, a distinction also held by the four organizing centers. The event, attended by the Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Jon Umerez, highlights the crucial role of these CEX seals of excellence in the Spanish scientific system and their impact on the international projection of frontier science.
SOMMa, the alliance of Severo Ochoa Centers and María de Maeztu Units, aims to promote and strengthen research excellence, improve the national and international impact of the centers and units accredited with this seal of excellence, and raise the profile of the research they carry out. The CEX seal of excellence, awarded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through the State Research Agency (AEI), aims to finance and accredit research centers and units in any scientific field that demonstrate scientific impact and leadership at the international level and actively collaborate with their social and business environments. These seals of excellence single out organizational structures that have highly competitive, cutting-edge research programs and which are among the best in the world in their respective scientific fields.
The SOMMa 2025 meeting aims to raise awareness about the various programs for attracting talent to the R&D ecosystem funded by both the AEI and regional governments. It also seeks to strengthen coordination, share strategies and best practices in R&D&i management, and generate synergies between leading institutions in various disciplines. The ultimate goal is to bolster the Spanish scientific and technological ecosystem and its capacity for innovation, transfer, and talent attraction.
“This meeting provides a unique opportunity to highlight the role of scientific management in research excellence.It also demonstrates the dynamism of Donostia as a city of science and knowledge,” said the local organizers. The SOMMa 2025 Meeting puts Donostia at the center of the debate on the future of scientific excellence and reaffirms the importance of management as an indispensable mainstay for scientific progress.