IMDEA in South Summit Madrid 2025
June 12, 2025
“In motion” was the slogan for the fourteenth edition of the South Summit. And it is also the slogan for the IMDEA Institutes, which are constantly “in motion” to bring science to society.
On Friday, June 6th, the IMDEA Institutes were at the South Summit Madrid 2025, with the round table Research, Innovation, Entrepreneurship: the IMDEA Way.
We would like to thank the Regional Ministry of Economy, Finance and Employment for inviting us and organising our round table at the Community of Madrid stand. It was the perfect setting to showcase our work to the 20,000 attendees who visited La Nave during the three days event, as well as the more than 7,500 start-ups and 2,100 investors who participated.
The round table, moderated by Vicente Parras, Deputy Director General of Technological Innovation at the Regional Ministry of Education, Science and Universities of the Community of Madrid, was attended by Raffaella Meffe, Deputy Director of IMDEA Water, Ricardo Ramos, Director of IMDEA Food, Félix Marín, Head of Technology Development and Transfer at IMDEA Energy, Germán Infante, Head of Technology Transfer and Pre-Award at IMDEA Materials, Pablo Serrano, Deputy Director of IMDEA Networks, and Alexey Gotsman, Researcher at IMDEA Software.
We had a distinguished presenter: Ana Ramírez de Molina, Vice-Counselor for Universities, Research and Science of the Madrid Regional Government. In her speech, she highlighted the importance of the work carried out by the IMDEA Institutes, which have nearly 1,000 researchers on staff, more than 480 active research projects, and over 100 registered patents, in addition to several spin-offs.
Vicente Parras, the moderator of the round table, began his speech with a quote that sums up the virtuous circle of investment in science: ‘We need money to create knowledge, and knowledge creates money.’ He went on to explain the objective of the round table: to raise awareness of the aspects of the IMDEA network’s work that are most closely related to innovation and entrepreneurship, and its expectations for the future.
During the round of presentations by IMDEA representatives, it became clear that the Institutes have used a variety of knowledge transfer mechanisms, adapting them to the idiosyncrasies of each centre and scientific area. These include patent and software registration, creation of spin-offs, collaboration with companies to develop specific technologies, alumni networks, publications in the general media to inform the public about certain services or products, and strategic collaborations with international organisations, and so on.
A notable example of one of these mechanisms are the 34 contracts signed by IMDEA Materials with companies in the last four years, which have brought them a total funding of approximately four million euros.
IMDEA Software‘s strategic alliances with Microsoft Research and EIT Digital, a European organisation that brings together education, science and entrepreneurship, have also been fundamental. The EIT Digital’s Spanish node has its offices at IMDEA Software‘s headquarters, where they have also created a small start-up incubator.
Another form of transfer that is proving very productive is the extension of the network of alumni or former members of IMDEA. Many IMDEA researchers have gone on to work in industries around the world, contributing the knowledge they have accumulated at IMDEA.
We don’t want to overlook another direct and immediate form of knowledge transfer practised at IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks: analysing the weaknesses of systems such as Google and Chrome in order to propose patches that prevent attacks on user security and privacy. A very topical example was given. That same week, the main Spanish media published the news that since September 2024, Meta had been tracking browsing activity on Android devices without permission. And what was the source of that news? An international team that included a researcher from IMDEA Networks, whose members thought that the most important thing was to alert the public as soon as possible about this attack on their privacy.
On other occasions, IMDEA develops technology in collaboration with companies, or provides them with technology produced in its laboratories. This is the case of ITP Aero and Airbus, which use IMDEA Materials‘ material fatigue simulation systems. This type of collaboration also serves to broaden the scope of the Institutes’ lines of research.
We have left the most well-known forms of transfer for last: patent and software registration and creation of technology-based companies (TBCs).
At IMDEA Water, the Membrane Technology group has registered a patent describing a process for transforming reverse osmosis membranes that have reached the end of their useful life into ultra and nanofiltration membranes, giving them a second life.
At the same institute, another of his groups developed the METLand technology which, using microbial electrochemical technologies, allows wastewater to be treated with zero or minimal energy consumption, in a decentralised way, without generating sludge, and reducing the space required for treatment. More than 10 years ago, this technology became a company that today has customers all over the world.
At IMDEA Food, which will soon be renamed IMDEA Nutrition to reflect its research focuses on the field of health, patent registration and the creation of TBCs are gaining momentum in the area of AI applied to the generation and analysis of information to help determine the relationship between diet and health improvement, using different tools, such as body sensors or the intelligent design of bioactive molecules.
Two other TBCs created within the Institute are: Precision for Health (P4H), established to bring the Institute’s research findings on nutrition, lifestyle and health to society; and MicroSEI, focused on designing strategies to promote healthy ageing through interaction with the microbiota.
In IMDEA Materials, a case worth highlighting is that of Floatech, a TBC that has developed a process for producing anodes for lithium-ion batteries. Created in 2021, it has just launched a pilot plant in Getafe.
Another success story, this time from IMDEA Networks, is LiFi4Food, a spin-off created in 2022 that offers sustainable solutions for precision agriculture using an LED lighting system that integrates LiFi wireless technology and battery-free ecological sensors that continuously monitor crop health.
Net AI is another spin-off whose founders include researchers from IMDEA Networks. Created in 2020, it analyzes the network in real time and offers AI-based solutions to enable efficient management and monetization of 4G/5G mobile networks.
After describing the current state of innovation and entrepreneurship born out of research carried out by the IMDEA Institutes, Vicente Parras posed two questions: Where do you think the path that gives this roundtable its title will lead in the future? Where would you like it to lead?
At this point, everyone agreed on one thing: there is a lack of funding to transform research results into practical applications or commercial products. This funding gap is often referred to as the “valley of death”. To get out of this valley, proof-of-concept (PoC) programs are essential: their ultimate goal is to demonstrate that the technology works and is ready to go to market. The problem is that such programs are few and they are not sufficiently funded.
Germán Infante commented that IMDEA Materials is working internally to address these shortcomings: in 2025, they launched the first call for proposals for the Materialise PoC Program, which is expected to continue with subsequent periodic calls.
Félix Marín pointed out that in the field of energy, the difficulties are even greater, given that the facilities and capital investments required are also greater. Scaling up laboratory results to see their commercial viability involves investing millions of euros. That is why they have sought an alternative: protecting research results under the legal concept of trade secrets in the early stages of the work and implementing the subsequent stages in collaboration with industry, until joint patents are registered. It is a way of outsourcing scaling.
They also agreed that the “contagion effect” works, but it is not enough. An ecosystem that favors entrepreneurship is needed: with more funding and legislation that reduces bureaucratic burdens and streamlines processes, supports transfer offices, and offers incentives for researchers, who must have attractive and stable careers, and so on.
Elaborating on this idea, Alexey Gotsman believes that the differences between the North American and European ecosystems may help explain why there is no equivalent to Silicon Valley in Europe.
For Pablo Serrano, the formula for success is to attract excellent researchers and provide them with good working conditions. He added that it is essential that researchers “tell people what we do. Society needs to know about our work.” That is the best way to transfer knowledge.
In short, as Germán Infante reminded us, knowledge transfer is one of the three pillars on which the IMDEA Institutes have been built, along with attracting talent and scientific excellence. And that is something IMDEA never forgets.
With our gratitude to everyone who made this round table possible, we bid farewell to South Summit Madrid 2025. We hope to return in a year’s time and share many more innovative and entrepreneurial success stories from the IMDEA Institutes. See you at the fifteenth edition!
