Josep Lladós, CVC director, Elected New President of the Catalan Association of Research Entities (ACER)
On Monday 6 October, the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Catalan Association of Research Entities (ACER) elected Dr Josep Lladós as the institution’s president for the next four years. Dr Lladós, current director of the Computer Vision Centre (CVC) and a professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), succeeds Josep Samitier, director of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).
Dr Josep Lladós holds a PhD in Computer Science, serves as director of the CVC, and is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the UAB. He also holds the Knowledge Transfer Chair of the UAB Research Park and Banc Santander, is the Spanish ambassador for the Time Machine Organisation, and an associate researcher at the IDAKS Lab of Osaka University. At the CVC, he is the principal investigator of the DocAI research group. His research focuses on computer vision, pattern recognition, and document analysis, fields in which he has led numerous projects, published over 300 scientific articles, and supervised 18 doctoral theses.
With a distinguished career in research and technology transfer, Dr Lladós has spearheaded multiple innovation initiatives, including the spin-off ICAR Vision Systems, which originated at the CVC and was acquired by the multinational Mitek in 2017. He currently serves as secretary of the Executive Committee of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), is an active member of the Spanish Association for Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition (AERFAI), and is editor-in-chief of leading international journals such as IJDAR and ELCVIA. He has contributed to both Catalonia’s and Spain’s AI strategies. Dr Lladós has been a board member of ACER for the past eight years and serves as acting president since July 2025.
The new ACER board also includes Dr Maria Lois, director of the Centre for Research in Agrigenomics (CRAG); Dr Francesc Posas, director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona (IRB Barcelona); Dr Joan Comella, director of the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute (IRSJD); Dr Begoña Benito, director of the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR); and Dr Vicenç Acuña, director of the Catalan Water Research Institute (ICRA).
Consolidating Catalonia as an International Benchmark in R&D&I
The Catalan Association of Research Entities (ACER) is an independent organization founded in 2003 with the mission of consolidating Catalonia as an international reference in scientific and technological research. ACER brings together non-profit institutions with their own legal identity established in Catalonia, most of them closely linked to universities, with significant participation from the Catalan government and support from various public and private entities.
ACER’s 43 member centres carry out research and development (R&D) activities across all fields of knowledge—from social sciences and humanities to life and health sciences, natural sciences and mathematics, and technology. The association works to define Catalonia’s scientific priorities and policies, and to optimise their management and implementation within the research sector.