Catalonia’s Gold Medal awarded to Italian scientist Caterina Biscari

The President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, awarded the “Medalla d'Or de la Generalitat” to the Italian scientist Caterina Biscari during a ceremony in Barcelona attended by the Italian Consul-General in Barcelona, Gabriele Luca Fava, and the embassy’s scientific attaché, Sergio Scopetta. Established in 1978, the Gold Medal of the Generalitat is the highest honour bestowed by the Autonomous Community of Catalonia and has been awarded to universally renowned figures such as Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Pau Casals, Josep Carreras and Montserrat Caballé.

A physicist and director of the Alba Synchrotron, one of Spain’s major research facilities, Caterina Biscari is the first non-Spanish national to receive this honour. The official reasons for the award state that “Biscari has strengthened the international profile of research carried out in Catalonia. Her scientific career combines scientific excellence, service to society and collaborative leadership skills. She is a role model for women in science and has helped to raise the profile of women in decision-making roles within European research”.

Caterina Biscari, born in Sicily, attended the Italian State School in Madrid and graduated from the Complutense University. She subsequently obtained her PhD from the Federico II University of Naples. A researcher at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), she specialises in particle accelerator physics, a field in which Italia boasts a long tradition of excellence, dating back to the pioneering studies of Edoardo Amaldi and Bruno Touschek at the INFN’s Frascati National Laboratories (LNF), where Biscari began her career. From there, her work has extended to other leading institutions, such as CERN in Geneva and, more recently, the National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO) in Pavia, where she has carried out fundamental, applied and health-related research.

Since 2012, she has been director of the Alba accelerator, in the Barcelona area. Alba is a synchrotron light source that enables the study of the properties of matter, with a wide range of applications in the fields of life sciences and materials science, which are relevant in both academia and industrial research. Since its foundation, more than ten thousand researchers and over a hundred companies have used Alba for their studies. Already an Officer of the Order of the Star of Italia and winner of the “Aldo Olcese 2026” award, established by the Italian Embassy in Madrid in memory of the distinguished compatriot who passed away prematurely last year, Caterina Biscari has always collaborated with the numerous scientific promotion initiatives organised by the Embassy and the Consulate General in Barcelona. The awarding of the ‘Medalla d’Or de la Generalitat’ is further recognition of the excellence of the Italian education and research system and of our tradition in accelerator physics.