The Autonomous University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; , es, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; UAB), is a public university mostly located in

Cerdanyola del Vallès Cerdanyola del Vallès () is a municipality in the ''comarca'' of the Vallès Occidental in Catalonia, Spain. It is situated on the north side of the Collserola ridge. The town is served by the A-7 and C-58 motorways, the N-150 road and the ...

, near the city of

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...

, Spain. , the university consists of 57 departments in the experimental, life, social and human sciences, spread among 13 faculties/schools. All these centers together award a total of 85 qualifications in the form of first degrees, diplomas, and engineering degrees. Moreover, almost 80 doctoral programs, and more than 80 other postgraduate programs are offered. UAB has more than 40,000 students and more than 3,600 academic and research staff. UAB is a pioneering institution in terms of fostering research. There are many research institutes in the campus, as well as other research centers, technical support services, and service-providing laboratories, and the ALBA (synchrotron) located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park is very close to UAB. UAB is one of the best universities in Spain, along with the

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

, located in the same city, according to the 2022

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...

, which ranked the university 209th overall in the world. Its subject rankings were: 27th in Veterinary Science, 72nd in Education & Training, 73rd in Linguistics, 78th in Sociology and 88th in Economics & Econometrics. The UAB is also a degree-awarding body of the prestigious Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI).

Location

Most UAB academic activity takes place on the main campus at

. Several centres exist in

Manresa Manresa () is the capital of the Comarca of Bages, located in the geographical centre of Catalonia, Spain, and crossed by the river Cardener. It is an industrial area with textile, metallurgical, and glass industries. The houses of Manresa ...

Sabadell Sabadell () is a city in Catalonia, Spain. It is in the south of the ''comarca'' of Vallès Occidental and its joint capital (co-capital), on the River Ripoll, north of Barcelona. Sabadell is located above sea level. Sabadell pioneered the I ...

Terrassa Terrassa (, es, Tarrasa) is a city in the east central region of Catalonia, Spain, in the province of Barcelona, '' comarca'' of Vallès Occidental, of which it is the co-capital along with Sabadell. The name ''Terrassa'' derives from Latin ...

Sant Cugat del Vallès Sant Cugat del Vallès (; es, San Cugat del Vallés, link=no) is a town and municipality north of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Known as ''Castrum Octavianum'' in antiquity (which literally means ''the castle of Octavianus'') and as ''Pins del ...

and

. The UAB campus is about away from the centre of

. It is accessible by air (flights to

Girona Girona (officially and in Catalan , Spanish: ''Gerona'' ) is a city in northern Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the Ter, Onyar, Galligants, and Güell rivers. The city had an official population of 103,369 in 2020. Girona is the capit ...

, or Reus), by train ( Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, Renfe), by coach ( SARBUS), or by car ( AP-7 and C-58 motorways).

History

The Autonomous University of Barcelona was officially created by legislative decree on 6 June 1968. Previously, during the

Second Spanish Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII, and was dissolved on 1 ...

, there had been plans for constituting a second university in

, but the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

and the following years of poverty under the early

dictatorship A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship a ...

did not allow these plans to become a reality until that year. On 27 July a disposition to the decree was added, starting the creation of the Faculty of Literature, Language, Art and the Humanities, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Economical Sciences. Around ten weeks later, on 6 October, the first course of the Faculty of Literature, Language, Art and the Humanities was inaugurated at

Monastery. During the same month, the Faculty of Medicine was created at the

Hospital de Sant Pau The former Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (, en, Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul) in the neighborhood of El Guinardó, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, is a complex built between 1901 and 1930. It is one of the most prominent work ...

. In 1969, an agreement was signed for the acquisition of the land where the university campus is currently located. During that year, the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Economical Sciences started running. During the following three years, several faculties and professional schools were created, and the construction works on the campus land took place. At the end of this period, most existing faculties and schools are settled in the campus. At the end of the dictatorship in 1976, the university introduced a plan to create a model of a democratic, independent university, described in a document known as ''Bellaterra Manifesto'', which included a declaration of principles. Two years later, after the approval of the Catalan Statute, the University Council agreed to recourse to the

Generalitat de Catalunya The Generalitat de Catalunya (; oc, label= Aranese, Generalitat de Catalonha; es, Generalidad de Cataluña), or the Government of Catalonia, is the institutional system by which Catalonia politically organizes its self-government. It is formed ...

. During the period between 1985 and 1992, the university underwent several faculty reforms and the creation of several new faculties. In 1993, the University Ville was inaugurated as a student residence integrated inside the campus complex.

Rankings

Autonomous University of Barcelona has consistently been ranked in several academic rankings. The 2021

Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...

ranked the UAB 201–300 in the world and 2nd in Spain. The 2022

ranked the university 209th in the world and 2nd in Spain. The 2022

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarel ...

placed the university 170th in the world, and 2nd in Spain. In '' U.S. News & World Report'' 2022 global university rankings, the university placed 144th in its world rankings, and 2nd in Spain. In U-Ranking 2021, the university was ranked 2nd in Spain based on their performance in teaching, research and innovations. Autonomous University of Barcelona also placed in numerous rankings that evaluates the employment prospects of graduates. In QS's 2022 graduate employability ranking, the university ranked 151–160 in the world, and sixth in Spain. In the Times Higher Education's 2021 global employability ranking, the university placed 132nd in the world, and 3rd in Spain.

Residence

Vila Universitària is the residential complex of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, located on its campus, which has 812 apartments with a total accommodation capacity for 2193 people. The apartments at Vila Universitària enjoy a privileged setting: they are located between the campus and the forest and have beautiful views, good train and bus connections and are about 45 minutes from the Plaça Catalunya train station in Barcelona.

UAB-approved research institutes

* Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). * Institute of Employment Studies (IET) * Institute of Government and Public Policy (IGOP) * Institute of Medieval Studies (IEM) * Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB) * Institute of Educational Sciences (ICE) * Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies (ICTA) * Institute of Neuroscience (INc) * Sports Research Institute (IRE)

Computer Vision Center

Computer Vision Center is a

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...

research center Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

based at UAB. It was established in 1994 by the

and UAB. In 2002, the commenced publication of Electronic Letters on Computer Vision and Image Analysis. It participated in the Pascal Challenge in 2009.

Port d'Informació Científica (PIC)

The Port d'Informació Científica (Catalan for "Scientific Information Port") is a research center and institution at the campus of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). Founded in 2003, its activity has been closely related to the development and exploitation of computing resources for the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid ( WLCG). A collaboration of IFAE (High Energy Physics Institute of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) and CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas Medioambientales and Tecnológicas), it is supported by regional (Catalan) and national (Spanish) research governing authorities. The main scientific project PIC is associated to, in terms of utilization of computing resources, is the deployment, operations and maintenance of the Spanish Tier 1 site for the WLCG, supporting the

ATLAS An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...

CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2 (programming language), used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum collection * Color manage ...

and LHCb experiments of the LHC at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gen ...

. PIC researchers and computing experts hence contribute to the development of Grid Computing technologies, as required by the computing needs of these experiments. Other projects in which PIC researchers are involved include computing support for Astrophysics and Cosmology experiments (such as MAGIC, PAU and DES) and computing techniques for medical imaging.

Notable faculty

* Jaume Casals (born 1958), professor of philosophy *

Maria Dolors García Ramón Maria Dolors García Ramón (born 1943) is a Spanish geographer. She is emeritus professor of geography of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Early life and education García Ramón was born on 7 November 1943 in Gandia, Valencia. She ha ...

(born 1943), geographer * Adriana Kaplan Marcusán (born 1956), Director of the NGO Wassu Gambia Kafo (WGK) and the university's Wassu Foundation * Martí de Riquer i Morera (1914–2013), linguist * Joan Martinez Alier (born 1939), professor *

Giorgos Kallis Giorgos Kallis (born 8 September 1972) is an ecological economist from Greece. He is an ICREA Research Professor at ICTA - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he teaches political ecology. He is one of the principal advocates of the theor ...

(born 1972), researcher and professor

Notable alumni

* D. Sam Abrams (born 1952), poet, translator and critic. *

Matilde Asensi Matilde Asensi Carratalá (born 1962) is a Spanish journalist and writer, specialised mainly in historical novels. Biography Asensi was born at Alicante. She studied journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and she later worked for ...

(born 1962), journalist and writer * Maria Badia i Cutchet (born 1947), politician * Mònica Bernabé (born 1972), journalist * Javier Calvo (1973), writer *

Carlos Cordon-Cardo Carlos Cordon-Cardo (born February 25, 1957) is a Spanish-born American physician and scientist known for his research in experimental pathology and molecular oncology. He holds the "Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given" Chair in Pathology a ...

(born 1957), bio-medical scientist *

Gema Climent Gema Climent (born in Sagunto, Valencia, Spain in 1971) is a Spanish psychologist and technology entrepreneur in the field of clinical neuropsychology. She is known for her work in the development of neuropsychological tests in virtual reality a ...

(born 1971), scientist, tech entrepreneur * Carlota Escutia Dotti, geologist * Cristina Fallarás (born 1968), journalist and writer *

Francesc Homs Molist Francesc Homs Molist (born 5 September 1969, in Vic, Barcelona) is a Spanish politician and Minister of the Presidency and Spokesperson of the Government of Catalonia. Early life and education Francesc Homs was born in Vic in 1969 and holds a ...

(born 1969), politician * Irene Rigau (born 1951), politician * Ramon Espadaler Parcerisas (born 1963), politician * Marisol Prado (born 1968), physician, psychiatrist and academic * Fátima Rodríguez (b. 1961), writer, translator *

Simona Škrabec Simona Škrabec (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1968) is a Slovene literary critic, essayist and translator who lives and works in Barcelona. She spent her childhood in the small town of Ribnica in the region of Lower Carniola. She has lived in Barcelona ...

(born 1968), critic, essayist and translator * Oriol Junqueras (born 1969), historian and politician *

Xavier Sala-i-Martin Xavier X. Sala i Martín (also ''Sala-i-Martin'' in English) is a Spanish-born Catalan-American economist and professor of economics at Columbia University. Sala i Martin is one of the leading economists in the field of economic growth.http://w ...

(born 1962), economist * Oleguer Presas (born 1980), footballer *

Montserrat Soliva Torrentó Montserrat Soliva Torrentó (1 January 1943 - 15 September 2019) was a Catalan doctor of chemistry. She served as a professor of the Higher School of Agriculture of Barcelona of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and had been a leading auth ...

(1943-2019), professor * María Josefa Yzuel Giménez (born 1940), professor * Belkis Valdman (1942-2011) chemical engineer and academic

References

External links

Official site

Publicacions Matemàtiques
the math department's research journal published since 1976 {{DEFAULTSORT:Autonomous University Of Barcelona Education in Barcelona Educational institutions established in 1968 Cerdanyola del Vallès Public universities 1968 establishments in Spain Education in Spain Institutes associated with CERN Universities and colleges in Spain