The UOC to award Dr Gabriel Ferraté with Medal of Honour

On Tuesday, 23 May, the UOC will pay homage to its founding president, Gabriel Ferraté, who, under a commission from the Government of Catalonia, drew up the plans for and created the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in 1994, an institution which he then ran for 10 years (1995–2005). Taking part in the event, presided over by the President of the Government of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, will be the Secretary for Universities and Research, Arcadi Navarro, and President of the UOC, Josep A. Planell, as well as Gabriel Ferraté himself. The celebration will take place in the Palau de la Generalitat's Sant Jordi Hall (accessed from Carrer Sant Honorat) at 5 pm.

The Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya was established in 1994 and was the first of its kind in the world to be conceived completely online. In the words of Ferraté, "the UOC breathed life into a project – better still, an idea – that some people did not quite understand and that many others viewed with scepticism, but which we all tackled with a level of ambition and excitement that was directly proportional to the greatness of the challenge". In the first academic year, from September 1995 to July 1996, two hundred students enrolled on the only two qualifications offered: Business Studies and the second-cycle degree in Educational Psychology.

Gabriel Ferraté i Pascual

Born in Reus in 1932, Dr Gabriel Ferraté is an industrial engineer and agricultural expert. His professional, scientific and research activity has focused on the areas of computer science, automatic control, and robotics.

He was president of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) between 1972 and 1994, with a pause from 1976 to 1978 when he was appointed Director-General for Universities and Research and, later, Director-General for Science Policy, at the Ministry of Education. From 1995 to 2005 he was president of the UOC.

He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), director of the Institut de Cibernètica, and vice-chairman of the Government of Catalonia's Inter-ministerial Council for Research and Technological Innovation (CIRIT). He has also been president of the Institut Cerdà. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the University of Lleida.

The event can be followed live on the University channel and via Facebook Live with tweets sent from the @UOCuniversitat account with the hashtag #FerratéUOC.