ICAC’s Board of Directors named Josep Maria Palet as the new director of the Institute, as a result of the open call selection process opened at the ICAC last September and managed by the CERCA Institution.
The Board of Directors is the Institute’s supreme decision-making and administrative body and meets regularly to approve the action plan and economic management, appoint the positions of the Institute and adopt the appropriate measures for the better running of the ICAC. It consists of representatives of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Rovira i Virgili University and the Interuniversity Council of Catalonia (list of members).
In the last meeting, on December 19th, ICAC’s Board of Directors named Josep Maria Palet as the new director of the Institute, in an extraordinary item of the agenda. The Board also approved the Action Plan and the budget proposal for 2020.
The strategic plan proposed by Josep Maria Palet for the period 2020-2023 places the emphasis on ICAC internationalization, research groups consolidation, and promoting research career.
His proposal focuses also in the importance of attracting resources from international competitive calls and improving internal processes related to the HRS4R strategy, such as the implementation, in 2020, of a prevention and action protocol against sexist violence, with the participation and collaboration of the ICAC’s Gender Equality Committee.
The new ICAC director wanted to show his commitment to dissemination and knowledge transfer actions, with different courses of action proposals, such as the implementation of a Social Media Strategy, participating in the future Bank of Science project (led by the Tarragona City Council) or the engagement in dissemination activities.
Members of the Board of Directors attending to the last meeting were (from left to right, in the following photo):
-
Jordi Peiret, ICAC administrator
-
Francesc Díaz, Rovira i Virgili University vice-rector
-
Josep Maria Palet, ICAC director
-
Antoni Gonzàlez, Board of Directors secretary
-
Maria José Figueras, Rovira i Virgili University rector
-
Joan Gómez, Catalan Government’s Director-General for Research
-
Maria Bonet, Rovira i Virgili University vice-rector
-
Maite Miró, Catalan Government’s Head of the Archeology and Paleontology Service
-
Joan Sanmartí, University of Barcelona Professor
The Board of Directors meeting also presented the result of the second evaluation requested by the CERCA Institution, which the ICAC recently passed with a high positive assessment by the Evaluation Committee.
Following a mandate from the Catalan Parliament and, subsequently, from the Government, the CERCA Institute has coordinated the assessment of CERCA research centres with the aim of analysing fulfilment of each one’s mission and contributing to defining and applying policies based on strategic planning. Assessments are carried out by an independent panel of renowned experts.
In 2019 ICAC passed its second evaluation (2013-2018), which also assessed how the centre has performed the recommendations made in the first evaluation (2010-2012). New report standard includes an evaluation grade (A, B, C, D) depending on the centre performance indicators.
The ICAC received a rating of B and the Evaluation Committee considered that the Institute positively applied the recommendations made in the first evaluation, while the strategic project for the next few years puts the centre on the right direction to improve its performance and get even more excellent results.
