The new headquarters of the Oceanographic will be located at Moll Vell in Palma

The Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, and the Director General of Universities, Research, and Higher Artistic Education, Sebastià Massanet, visited the CSIC headquarters in Madrid today, January 15, to meet with the president of this state agency, Eloísa Del Pino, and Carlos Closa, vice president of organization and institutional relations of the CSIC. This body convened the meeting following the meeting held at the Ministry on November 26.

In this meeting, it was agreed that the Ministry of Education and Universities will provide funding for the construction of the new headquarters of the Balearic Oceanographic Center (COB), a research center belonging to the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), dependent on the CSIC.

This new headquarters will be built at Moll Vell in Palma and is expected to be completed by 2028. The building will be integrated into the Pol Marí, a hub that brings together some of the main research centers in the field of marine sciences and technologies of the Balearic Islands.

Currently, the Balearic Oceanographic Center carries out 109 projects related to the conservation and protection of aquatic ecosystems, the sustainable management of marine resources, and the conservation of biodiversity, which together amount to more than 14.5 million euros and involve 130 researchers. These researchers contribute to the knowledge needed to develop actions to improve, manage, and conserve marine natural resources.

Several issues related to research in other research centers with CSIC participation in the Balearic Islands, such as the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), the Institute for Interdisciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC), and the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME), were also discussed at this morning's meeting at the CSIC headquarters.