The Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) is the largest public multidisciplinary research organisation in Spain (www.csic.es). The CSIC has 126 institutes or centres distributed throughout Spain, including 50 Joint Research Units with universities or other research institutions. It has a staff of more than 13500 employees, among these about 3,500 are permanent researchers and more than 4,000 are pre- and post-doctoral researchers. It has considerable experience in both participating in and managing RTD projects and training of research personnel. Under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) CSIC signed 404 actions and was the fifth most successful organisation in Europe in project execution and funding in that Framework Programme. Under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) CSIC has signed more than 580 projects (including 38 coordinated by CSIC and 32 ERC) for an amount of more than €190 million.
Three groups within two institutes of CSIC will be involved in the project: one from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM; Marine Sciences Institute) and two from the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB; Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona). The main tasks of the CSIC will be in WP4 (leading): integrating transversal sensors, developing new temperature and pressure sensors and in WP7: development of heavy metals sensors.
