The ICE-CSIC Annual Report 2023 is now available. It presents a summary of ICE-CSIC’s many activities throughout the year. Download the Annual Report here.

2023 has been at ICE-CSIC a year for consolidating many of the efforts that have been possible thanks to the foundations laid out in previous years.

The Institute kept growing during 2023 with 173 people working at the Institute during the year, for a total of 155 ICE-CSIC personnel as of 31 December 2023. The Institute welcomed four new Faculty members.

In 2023, our research continued excelling in many areas of astronomy and Earth observation with a total of 289 refereed publications by ICE-CSIC researchers. This year was also very important regarding ICE-CSIC’s participation in space missions. As a highlight, in early July, ESA’s EUCLID satellite mission was launched. This is a very important milestone for our institute, since ICE-CSIC has been working for over 15 years in the mission.

The ICE-CSIC Advanced Engineer Unit (AEU) has also been going through a lot of changes to offer better services to the engineers and experimental researchers working at the Institute. In this respect, there have been significant improvements at the AEU in 2023. In addition, there have been substantial renovations in the laboratories, such as the microscopy clean room, which also includes a vacuum Fourier spectrometer.

One important highlight of the year was that Diego F. Torres, our director since 2016, stepped down from his position in early September. During his time as director, the Institute grew substantially and consolidated its place as a centre of excellence in experimental and theoretical research in space sciences. While a new director was appointed, ICE-CSIC Deputy Director Aldo Serenelli served as Acting Director from September 2023.

In addition, we held the the 6th edition of the ICE-CSIC Summer School, which welcomed around 40 early-career researchers from 14 different countries and who spent two weeks at the Institute learning about the Life Cycle of Dust from renowned experts in the field.

2023 was also very important for ICE-CSIC to look into the future and foster team building, since the Institute held its 4th Strategy Retreat at the end of January in Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, near Barcelona. For three days, all ICE-CSIC personnel learnt about the general status of the Institute and received updates on the Institute’s departments, current space missions, technology transfer opportunities, as well as attended talks by senior researchers and engineers, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD students discussing their research and work.

2023 highlights

• ICE-CSIC researchers published a total of 289 publications: 95% of them, in 1st quartile journals.

• We grew a lot during the last year: for the first time we passed the mark of 150 people working at the institute, for a total of 155 people as of 31 December 2023.

• We have 4 new Faculty members: Guillem Anglada, Lluís Galbany, Sascha Husa and Daniele Viganò.

• We’re a diverse institute: there were 58 people from abroad and 39 women.

• We started 17 new projects for a total of 5.05 million € and had another 32 ongoing.

• 1 PhD thesis and 11 Master theses were defended.

• 17 press releases with >523 media impacts and over 477 thousand people reached by our communication actions

Our research and engineering staff have achieved many important milestones. Find more about them here.