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9th edition, 7th to 18th July, 2025

- Fundacio Catalunya La Pedrera - BIYSC
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) – NanoSat Lab - NanoSat2 - BIYSC

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) – NanoSat Lab

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) is a public institution of research and higher education in the fields of engineering, architecture, sciences and technology, and one of the leading technical universities in Europe. Every year, close to 6,000 bachelor’s and master’s students, more than 300 doctoral students and 1,600 continuing education students graduate. The UPC has a high graduate employment rate: 95% of its graduates are in work and 88% find a job in under three months. It is ranked in the main international rankings.

The Remote Sensing, Antennas, Microwaves and Superconductivity Group
(CommSensLab), is focused on research on antennas, microwaves, radar, remote
sensing and optical communications. Research activities of the CommSensLab Group
are organized in seven research lines.

The Nano-Satellite and Payload Laboratory (UPC NanoSat Lab), located in the Technical
University of Catalonia – UPC BarcelonaTech (Campus Nord), is a cross-departmental
initiative belonging to the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB-TelecomBCN). With the design and development of nano-satellite missions as its mainactivity, the lab is focused on the exploration of innovative small spacecraft system
concepts and developing and integrating subsystems and payloads for Earth
Observation. The lab’s industry-grade equipment allows for the testing and qualifying of
nano-satellite systems in space conditions (up to 6U). In addition, two ad-hoc ground
stations have been installed to operate the launched missions.

Ranking positioning

Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) 2024:

  • Engineering: Europe 35, Global 186, Spain 1
  • Technology and Instrumental Sciences: Europe 9-24, Global 101-150, Spain 1


QS World University Rankings 2024:

  • Civil and Structural Engineering: Europe10, Global 40, Spain 1
  • Telecommunications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering: Europe 23, Global 66,
    Spain 1
  • Industrial, Mechanics and Aeurospace engineering: Europe 28, Global 72, Spain 1
  • Computing Sciences and Information Systems: Europe 28, Global 88, Spain 1

Director of the center

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Nuria Duffo

Nuria Duffo (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1996. During her doctoral studies, she focused on numerical methods for the characterization of radar targets. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the analysis of electromagnetic problems using the boundary element method. Since 1998, she has been actively involved as a Researcher in the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission in the framework of several European Space Agency (ESA) contracts, directly or as a subcontractor of companies (EADS-Casa Espacio, Madrid, Spain, Deimos Engenharia, Lisboa, Portugal). Her expertise includes, among others, the fundamentals of interferometric radiometry, aperture synthesis, image reconstruction, and calibration algorithms, as well as hardware specifications and payload characterization. She has been a Telecommunications Engineer with UPC since 1990, where she has been a Professor since 1992, being first an Associate Professor and then a Full Professor since 1997.

Renowned researchers

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Adriano Camps

Adriano Camps joined the CommSensLab-UPC group, Dept. of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, as an Assistant Professor, in 1993, an Associate Professor in 1997, and has been a Full Professor since 2007. In 1999, he was on sabbatical leave with the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA. He has authored or coauthored more than 285 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, nine book chapters, and the book with Emery Introduction to Satellite Remote Sensing: Atmosphere, Ocean, Land and Cryosphere Applications (Elsevier, 2017), and more than 559 conference presentations. His h-index is 64/51, and his publications have received more than 16.905/11.531 citations, and has advised 33 Ph.D. thesis students (more than ten on-going) and more than 160 final projects and M.Eng. theses. Dr. Camps was the recipient of several awards, including the European Young Investigator Award in 2004 (ERC precursor), the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Academia Research Award in 2009 and 2015, the Duran Farell Award for Technology Transfer in 2000, 2010, and 2022, and the 2021 IEEE GRSS Education Award.

Related project

Building Tomorrow’s Space Pioneers: Designing a PocketQube Satellite

More info