The UOC research centres are to move to the new Media-TIC building in Barcelona from September

The UOC staff who are to be based at this building, on the corner of Roc Boronat and Sancho d’Avila streets, as of September are those from the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, the UOC Research and Transfer Support Office, and the Research Resources Centre, which includes the Castells Collection. This staff will thus leave the centre that the University had in Castelldefels’s Mediterranean Technology Park. Likewise, the eLearn Center is also to move from the UOC’s Barcelonès centre, alongside part of the International Graduate Institute from the UOC’s building on Rambla Poblenou, also in the 22@ district, and the Open Innovation Office from the University’s headquarters on Avinguda Tibidabo.

The UOC is to take over the top three floors of the Media-TIC building, representing a total rented area of 5,000 m2, which is almost a third of the building’s total. The new building has an auditorium that holds three-hundred people, an open-plan ground floor that is open to the public, meeting rooms, restaurant services and parking.

This move represents an important step for the UOC as it brings the research assistants, doctoral interns, researchers and faculty physically closer together, while also bringing together the UOC’s two research centres under the same roof: the IN3, created in 2000 and headed by Professor Manuel Castells, and the eLearn Center, created in 2009 and headed by Begoña Gros, UOC Vice President for Innovation.