The six La Salle-URL research groups, which together make up La Salle Research & Development (La Salle R&D), are now part of the new TECNIO association, created to promote technology transfer in Catalonia. The Ramon Llull University is one of the founding institutions of the association, along with the rest of the Catalan universities, the CERCA Institution and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). In addition, the new entity has the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya through ACCIÓ, the agency for the competitiveness of the Department of Business and Work.
The new TECNIO association is made up of the 59 research groups that currently have the TECNIO accreditation granted by ACCIÓ, a seal that identifies technology developers in Catalonia to facilitate their connection with companies. Among these research groups are the six of La Salle-URL: Data Science for the Digital Society (DS4DS), Integrated Architectural Research (IAR), Group Media Technologies (GTM), Group of Research in Entrepreneurship and Technology-Based Innovation (GREITM), Group of Research in Technology Enhanced Learning (GRETEL) i el Group on Internet Technologies & Storage (GRITS). The association will receive a grant of € 300.000 from ACCIÓ in the next three years to reinforce the market vision of these agents and bring them closer to companies.
The objective of this new entity is to group and make visible the activity of the research groups with the TECNIO seal, encourage their collaboration and promote them as an instrument of connection with the business fabric and the administration. The 59 groups with the TECNIO seal are technology developers recognized by AGAUR who carry out applied research in differential technologies and have the capacity to transfer it to the market through R&D projects with companies, patent licenses or the creation of emerging technology-based companies. These are research groups specializing in different topics, mostly located within Catalan universities, and distributed throughout the country, which are active with both SMEs and large companies in Catalonia and on a European scale.