ShareJavier Rodríguez Fonollosa, new member of the Research Assessment Commission
The Agency's Governing Board has appointed Dr Javier Rodríguez Fonollosa member of the Research Assessment Commission, which is responsible, among other functions, for the issuing of research and advanced research accreditation.
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The Agency's Governing Board has appointed Dr Javier Rodríguez Fonollosa, Professor of Signal Theory and Communications at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), as a new member of the Research Assessment Commission.
With a degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from Northeastern University in Boston (USA), in 1993 Dr Rodríguez joined UPC, where he has been a professor since 2003. He had previously spent time at the European Space Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC) in The Netherlands and was a research assistant at Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In the field of research, Dr Rodríguez led the UPC's participation in the ACTS Mobile projects, funded by the European Commission, called TSUNAMI (II) and SUNBEAM, which included the analysis of adaptive antennas in 2nd and 3rd generation mobile communications systems. From January 2000 to 2003 he was technical and project coordinator for the IST METRA and I-METRA projects, dedicated to the introduction of multi-antenna terminals in UMTS and Systems beyond 3G. From January 2006 to December 2008, he coordinated the IST FP6 SURFACE project, which assessed the performance of a generalised air interface with self-configuration capabilities. In November 2006 he began coordination of the five-year Type C-Consolider project, Fundamental Bounds in Network Information Theory, in the framework of the Spanish State Research Plan.
From 2008 to 2014 he was the coordinator of CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 Fundamentos y Metodologías para las Futuras Redes de Comunicación y Sensores (COMONSENS), which involved six years's work, 3.5 million euros and 135 researchers from 10 universities and research centres in Spain. The project continued under his coordination first as a CONSOLIDER Excellence Network and then as a research network under the name COMONSENS Network.
From 2016 to 2020 he coordinated the TEC2016 project Coding and Signal Processing for Emerging Communication and Wireless Sensor Networks (CARMEN), funded by the Spanish government and involving four universities in Spain. It was followed by two other projects – Advances in coding and signal processing for the digital society (ADELE) and Enabling communication, coding and processing technologies for new generation classical technologies – coordinated from UPC, in which Dr Rodriguez also took part.
From 2018 to 2022 his department led UPC's participation in the QuantumCAT project, coordinated from ICFO, which led to the development of a new interuniversity master's degree in Quantum Science and Technology, on which Dr Rodríguez is responsible for Quantum Information Theory. He also served on a number of assessment panels such as the NSF for Wireless Information Technology and Networking, and European Commission committees in the assessment of proposals and project verification.
In 2008 he participated in the KTH International Research Assessment Exercise 2008. The following year he took part in the Aalto University Research Assessment (Finland) and in the Communications in Interference Limited Networks programme of the German Research Foundation the following year. In 2016 he was visiting professor at the University of British Columbia (Canada).
In 2009 he coordinated the proposal for the EMMC ERASMUS MUNDUS Joint Master Programme 2009-2013 Master of Science in Research on Information and Communication Technologies (MERIT). Since 2005 he has been a member of the Editorial Board of the EURASIP Signal Processing Journal. In 1995 and 2001, he co-chaired and organised the IEEE Signal Processing/ATHOS Workshop on Higher-Order Statistics in Begur, and the IST Mobile Communications Summit 2001 in Sitges. He was elected senior member of the IEEE and member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Signal Processing for Communications Technical Committee (SPCOM) in February 1998 and January 1999, respectively.
From 2010 to 2014, he was manager of the Communications and Electronic Technologies (TEC) area of the Spanish National Research Plan of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (MINECO). He has been a member of the CITIC Scientific Advisory Board of the University of A Coruña since 2018, and an expert for the European Innovation Council and the SME Executive Agency (EISMEA) since March 2023.
The chair of the Research Assessment Commission will appoint Dr Rodríguez as chair of the Specific Commission for Engineering and Architecture.
With this appointment, the Research Assessment Commission maintains parity between women and men, with 59% of its members being women.