The Autonomous University of Barcelona (;

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

: ; ; 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 Ren ...

, near the city of

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of 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 is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. , 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 programmes, 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 centres, technical support services, and service-providing laboratories, and the

ALBA (synchrotron) ALBA (meaning "Sunrise" in Catalan language, Catalan and in Spanish language, Spanish) is a 3 GeV, third-generation synchrotron light source facility located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park in Cerdanyola del Vallès near Barcelona, in Catalonia ( ...

located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park is very close to UAB. UAB is the best university in Spain according to the 2023

QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...

, which ranked the university 178th 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

Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

(IBEI).

Location

Most UAB academic activity takes place on the main campus in Cerdanyola del Vallès. Several centres exist in

Manresa Manresa () is the capital of Bages county, located in the central region of Catalonia, Spain. Crossed by the river Cardener, it is an industrial area with textile, metallurgical, and glass industries. The houses of Manresa are arranged aro ...

Sabadell Sabadell () is a city and municipality in Catalonia, Spain. It is in the south of the ''comarca'' of Vallès Occidental, where it is one of the two capitals, the other being Terrassa. It is located on the River Ripoll, north of Barcelona, a ...

Terrassa Terrassa () is a city in central-eastern Catalonia and in the province of Barcelona (Spain). It is one of the two capitals of Vallès Occidental county, being the larger in both area and population. The name ''Terrassa'' derives from Latin ''Te ...

Sant Cugat del Vallès Sant Cugat del Vallès () is a town and municipality north of Barcelona, Catalonia. Known as ''Castrum Octavianum'' in antiquity (which means ''the castle of Octavianus'') and as ''Pins del Vallès'' during the Second Spanish Republic, it is nam ...

and Barcelona. The UAB campus is about away from the centre of Barcelona. It is accessible by air (flights to Barcelona,

Girona Girona (; ) is the capital city of the Province of Girona in the autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the Ter, Onyar, Galligants, and Güell rivers. The city had an official population of 106,476 in 2024, but the p ...

, or

Reus Reus () is the capital of Baix Camp, in Camp de Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain. The area has long been an important producer of wines and spirits, and gained continental significance during the time of the Phylloxera plague. Currently it is known f ...

), by train (

Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (, "Catalan Government Railways"; Spanish: ''Ferrocarriles de la Generalidad de Cataluña''), or FGC, is a railway company which operates several unconnected lines in Catalonia, Spain. The lines operated include metro and commuter lines in and a ...

Renfe Renfe (, ), officially Renfe-Operadora, is Spain's national state-owned railway company. It was created in 2005 upon the split of the former Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE) into the Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias ( ...

), by bus (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 democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of Alfonso XIII, King Alfonso XIII. ...

, there had been plans for constituting a second university in Barcelona, but the

Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, 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 policies.J ...

and the following years of poverty under the early

dictatorship A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no Limited government, limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, ...

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 Sant Cugat del Vallès 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 (, ) in the neighborhood of El Guinardó, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, is a complex built between 1901 and 1930. It is one of the most prominent works of the Catalan modernisme architect Lluís ...

in Barcelona. 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 (; ; ), or the Government of Catalonia, is the institutional system by which Catalonia is self-governed as an autonomous community of Spain. It is made up of the Parliament of Catalonia, the President of the Govern ...

. 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 2024

ranked the university 149th in the world and 1st in Spain. The 2023

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...

placed the university 183th 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 university, located on its campus, which has 812 apartments with a total accommodation capacity for 2,193 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 de Catalunya Plaça de Catalunya (, meaning in English "Catalonia Square"; sometimes referred to as Plaza de Cataluña, its Spanish name) is a large square in central Barcelona that is generally considered to be both its city centre and the place where the ol ...

train station in Barcelona.

UAB-approved research institutes

(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)

Library

The UAB has nine university libraries, eight of which are on the Bellaterra Campus, and the other on the Sabadell Campus. * Science and Technology Library * Social Sciences Library * Humanities Library * General Map Library * European Documentation Center * Communication Library and General Newspaper and Periodicals Library * Library of Medicine * Veterinary Library * Sabadell University Library

Computer Vision Center

Computer Vision Center is a

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

research centre A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural sc ...

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 ''Electronic Letters on Computer Vision and Image Analysis'' (usually abbreviated ''ELCVIA'') is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal focusing on computer vision and image analysis (subfields of artificial intelligence) as well as image ...

. 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 centre and institution at the campus of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. 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 The Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), until 1986 Junta de Energía Nuclear (JEN), is a Spanish public research institution. History The Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT) is ...

(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 utilisation 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 world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2, a programming language implemented for and used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum coll ...

and

LHCb The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is a particle physics detector collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb specializes in the measurements of the parameters of CP violation in the interactions of b- and c-hadro ...

experiments of the

LHC The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, and ...

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 Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. 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

* Margarita Arboix, pharmacology department of the Faculty of Medicine * 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, Province of Valenc ...

(born 1943), geographer * Miren Etxezarreta, economist * Pilar González i Duarte (born 1945), chemist (also alumnus) *

Adriana Kaplan Marcusán Adriana Kaplan Marcusán (Buenos Aires, 19 December 1956) is an Argentine anthropologist and Director of the NGO Wassu Gambia Kafo (WGK) and the Wassu Foundation of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is expert in sexual and reproductive ...

(born 1956), director of the NGO Wassu Gambia Kafo (WGK) and the university's Wassu Foundation *

Martí de Riquer i Morera Martí de Riquer i Morera, 8th Count of Casa Dávalos (, ) (3 May 1914 – 17 September 2013) was a Spanish literary historian and Romance philologist, a recognised international authority in the field. His writing career lasted from 1934 to 20 ...

(1914–2013), linguist *

Joan Martinez Alier Joan Martinez Alier (born 1939, Barcelona, Spain) is a Spanish economist, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Economic History and researcher at ICTA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has made important contributions in ecological econ ...

(born 1939), professor * Giorgos Kallis (born 1972), researcher and professor

Notable alumni

D. Sam Abrams D. Sam Abrams (born 1952) is a poet, translator and Literary criticism, critic. He is considered an authority on the Catalan language. He holds a degree in Hispanic Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Bibliography Poetry *''Ca ...

(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 * Lola Badia (born 1951), philologist, medievalist * Maria Badia i Cutchet (born 1947), politician *

Mònica Bernabé Mònica Bernabé Fernández (born December 1972) is a Spanish journalist known for her work as a correspondent in Afghanistan, where she lived for nearly eight years. Biography Mònica Bernabé studied at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. ...

(born 1972), journalist * Javier Calvo (1973), writer * Mariana Castells (living), Spanish-American allergist * Carlos Cordon-Cardo (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 Cristina Fallarás Sánchez (Zaragoza, 18 March 1968) is a Spanish journalist. She studied Information science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and has worked as a journalist for Cadena Ser, ''El Mundo (Spain), El Mundo'', ''El Periódic ...

(born 1968), journalist and writer *

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

(born 1969), politician *

Irene Rigau Irene Rigau i Oliver is a Catalan politician from Spain, born in Banyoles (Pla de l'Estany County) in 1951.Ramon Espadaler Parcerisas (born 1963), politician * Marisol Prado (born 1968), physician, psychiatrist and academic * Mar Reguant (born 1984), economist *

Fátima Rodríguez Fátima Rodríguez ( Pontedeume, Galicia, 15 May 1961) is a Spanish Galician writer, and a translator in Galician and Spanish languages. She is also a professor at the University of Western Brittany in Brest, France. Biography Rodríguez studi ...

(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 Barcelo ...

(born 1968), critic, essayist and translator *

Oriol Junqueras Oriol Junqueras i Vies (; born 11 April 1969) is a Spain, Spanish politician and historian from Catalonia. A former mayor of the municipality of Sant Vicenç dels Horts in Catalonia, Junqueras served as Vice President of Catalonia from January 2 ...

(born 1969), historian and politician * Xavier Sala-i-Martin (born 1962), economist * Oleguer Presas (born 1980), footballer * Montserrat Soliva Torrentó (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 Universities and colleges established in 1968 Cerdanyola del Vallès Public universities 1968 establishments in Spain Education in Spain Institutes associated with CERN Universities and colleges in Spain Buildings and structures in Vallès Occidental