The light of Cerdanyola

When visitors enter here for the first time, they exclaim: “Wow!” says Caterina Biscari, director of the Alba Synchrotron in Cerdanyola del Vallés, one of Spain’s cutting-edge technological facilities, with a smile.

Surrounded by tubes, lenses, mirrors, leaning on a railing of what looks like the giant intestine of a science fiction machine, Biscari speaks lightly and naturally about electrons, atoms, cells, particle accelerators, the most common words in her professional world and which she mostly uses in English.

This cutting-edge facility aims to expand increasingly into the private and business sectors.

In the heart of this facility, where researchers from Los Alamos meet young computer scientists in T-shirts, something unique is taking place. An eye is activated. An eye that allows us to see deep within, to unprecedented dimensions, as if we were standing before a microscope activated by powerful, hyperhormonal X-rays that reach the very soul of cells. In this cutting-edge center, just minutes from Barcelona, this light-powered tool investigates the substance of matter, revealing its essence.

The Alba Synchrotron, after 15 years in operation, is preparing to enter its second phase, which will extend into the next decade. The Alba II plan has already been announced, an investment and expansion funded by the Government and the Generalitat (Catalan government) with €150 million, which will involve replacing the current machinery with state-of-the-art equipment (it is currently in its fourth phase).

Now this facility, with a budget of around 30 million euros per year—and rising—which still sounds cryptic and enigmatic to the general public, is looking to increasingly expand into the private and business world. Just a few days ago, Biscari held a private, closed-door meeting at the Cercle d'Economia. The idea is clear: if the Synchrotron's users are mostly universities and scientific centers, companies can also become clients. To do what? The applications of this powerful "microscope" are endless and, for those outside the scientific field, surprising.

For example, in a glass-enclosed cubicle at the Synchrotron, researchers observe on a screen how a cancer cell evolves after a drug is administered to test its efficacy: valuable information for pharmaceutical companies. There was also the real-life case of an SME that requested the facility's services to study the layers that potato chip bags must have to preserve the food.

More use cases: thanks to the Synchrotron, companies can examine in detail how solar panel particles act or how the electrons in the chemical elements necessary for optimal battery function are activated. And let's not forget that it was here, in Cerdanyola, that the Covid-19 virus was studied in detail during the pandemic.

Caterina Biscari (Ragusa, 1957) claims to have two countries: Italy and Spain. She was born in Sicily to an Italian father and an Andalusian mother, but trained in physics in Madrid. She traveled through several countries, passing through Geneva (Switzerland), Pavia, Naples, and Frascati (Italy), until finally settling more than a decade ago in Barcelona, where she now lives with her husband, another scientific eminence, Eugenio Coccia, founder of the Gran Sasso Science Institute and current director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE) in Barcelona. “At dinner at home, we don’t talk about work,” she jokes.

As an anecdote, the more than 270 workers at the Alba Synchrotron, a third of them foreigners, who represent excellence in the public technology sector, face the same union battles as any other company. They are at war with the Treasury, which wants to cut their salary supplement. There are even posters hanging on the walls of the Synchrotron with their demands. There are fears that this will hinder the attraction of talent. Or that it will overshadow research. A paradox for a center that absorbs energy and works with light.