Skip to main content
< Back to news
 22.04.2026

Josep Samitier, Executive Director of Fraunhofer Spain: “Fraunhofer’s experience should enable us to adapt its methodology to reach the market more effectively”

Fraunhofer Spain Foundation, a subsidiary of the German multinational Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, is one of the latest entities to establish itself at the Science Park of the University of Barcelona (PCB‑UB) with the inauguration in October of the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Theragnostics (Fraunhofer CAT). It is a leading European institution in applied research and the transfer of scientific knowledge to the market, launched in Barcelona with the aim of promoting new tools for the diagnosis, prognosis, and selection of personalized therapies, accelerating the transfer of knowledge to clinical practice and the biotechnology industry.

“In Barcelona there are many centres with a strong capacity to generate knowledge, and what we lack is finding a way for this knowledge to ultimately generate products and services that reach society,” explains Josep Samitier, Executive Director of Fraunhofer Spain, who served as Director of the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) until last year.

In this interview, conducted during Coffee Connection, the networking event organised for the Science Park community, Josep Samitier discusses the reasons behind this strategic alliance and its benefits for the innovation ecosystem and precision medicine research. “Fraunhofer’s experience, gained over many years in Germany, should allow us to see how to adapt its methodology and activities to help the entire Catalan ecosystem, as well as that of Spain as a whole, to reach the market and society more effectively at this time,” the director states.

Choosing the Science Park as a strategic location to launch its laboratories represents a significant competitive advantage. According to Samitier, “it is a very rich ecosystem, with major research centres and excellent researchers, while also being home to an ecosystem of start-ups, spin-offs and new companies. This greatly facilitates our work of connecting ideas and knowledge.”