Moisés Navarro and Juan M. Parro, PhD students at the SPCOMNAV group, have recently joined the European Space Agency (ESA), where they will be pursuing their PhD degree under the supervision of ESA researchers and Profs. Gonzalo Seco-Granados and José A. López-Salcedo, members of SPCOMNAV. These PhD contracts are being funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and their goal is to strengthen the link with international research centers of excellence. Both contracts are associated to research projects whose aim is to explore new techniques for improving the security and reliability of the Galileo global navigation satellite system (i.e. the European alternative to the current GPS system), and in particular, by focusing on its public regulated service.

This initiative involves a direct funding of more than 250,000 EUR to UAB, and it will allow the SPCOMNAV group to strengthen its research lines and to consolidate as a European reference in the field of wireless communications and positioning systems. In 2010, the SPCOMNAV group was also awarded with a grant from the ESA-PRESTIGE program to fund a PhD student, and in the last four years, the group has also participated in three research projects awarded by ESA in competitive calls with top-level international consortia.