Message from the Dean

The purpose of this web page is to welcome you to the University of Barcelona's Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences. Web pages are nowadays real gateways to many institutions' information and content. The Gaudí-designed gateway depicted in the Faculty's logo symbolizes the openness —to knowledge, society and the outside world— that inspires the work of the institution now opening its doors to you.

Thanks to its strategic position, the Faculty caters for an extensive geographical area. This has been a factor in it having had a sizeable community of students —our annual intake stands at over 2,000— from a wide range of backgrounds for more than 150 years. Not every faculty of pharmacy has such a long history. It gives us tremendous satisfaction, as well as a sense of great responsibility, to be taking such a long-standing project forward, constantly adapting it to meet society's needs.

The Faculty currently offers three bachelor's degrees. Its Pharmacy programme is taught on the Diagonal Knowledge Gateway Campus, while its programmes in Human Nutrition and Dietetics and in Food Science and Technology have been taught on the Torribera Food and Nutrition Campus in Santa Coloma de Gramenet since September 2010. We place particular emphasis on relevance to both the more healthcare-related and more industrial sides of professional activity. We thus have strong ties with local government bodies, professional associations, pharmaceutical laboratories and other organizations, with a view to ensuring that students' training closely resembles actual professional practice and helping them get their careers off to a successful start.

Another key element of the Faculty's activity is scientific research. Numerous research projects are carried out in our laboratories, some of them of the basic variety and others completely applied, reflecting the broad spectrum of content our training encompasses. I could mention eminent scientists who have cut their teeth in our classrooms and laboratories at this point, but will refrain from doing so to avoid missing anybody out. Suffice to say that such people are a first-rate endorsement of what we do, not only where their knowledge is concerned but also, in many cases, in terms of their human qualities, which we look to help develop between all the students, lecturers and administrative and service staff who are part of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences.

On behalf of myself and all the members of our governing bodies, welcome to the Faculty. I hope you will enjoy your time with us and make the most of all the opportunities open to you here.

Jordi Camarasa García