CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council, is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe, It is an autonomous multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary public research composed of around 110 research institutes in all research areas with a total staff of more than 15000 employees. Three CSIC institutes are involved in this project, the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute of the National Microelectronics Center (IMB-CNM), the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona, (ICMAB), and the Materials Science Institute of Madrid, (ICMM). The two Barcelona institutes are in the UAB Bellaterra Campus, and so, co-located with ALBA synchrotron.

IMB-CNM hosts near 100 researchers, an extra 70 research engineers and technicians. It is arranged in eight different research groups doing technology-intensive science with micro and nanotechnologies dealing with microelectronics and physical, chemical and biomedical micro and nanosystems.

ICMAB deals with research in Advanced Functional Materials with 60 permanent and a total of >200 researchers. Its Strategic Research Program face three social grand-challenges: clean and secure energy, smart and sustainable electronics and smart nanomedicine through mission-oriented research lines.

ICMM hosts more than 400 researchers and is amongst the largest institutes within CSIC. Its research lines cover all aspects of materials science from fundamentals to applications, both from experimental and theoretical approaches.