Pompeu Fabra University is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. Established in 1990 by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and named after Pompeu Fabra, it is known for its competitiveness in research and commitment to transforming education for future challenges. UPF has been recognized as the best university in Spain since 2015 and was ranked the 16th best young university globally in 2022 by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. It is known for its academic prestige and selective admissions, with many of its degree programs requiring high entrance grades. The university excels in economics, political science, and law, with its Economics program ranked among the top 50 worldwide. The Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences is the only faculty in Spain to receive the Certificate for Quality in Internationalization. In 2010, UPF was designated an "International Excellence Campus" by the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Campuses

The university offers its studies around three areas of knowledge, each one developed on a different campus:

Teaching

Specifically, teaching is organized in seven faculties and one engineering school:

Higher education affiliated centers

Finally, the university also has several higher education affiliated centers:

Research

Research is organized in eight departments: Moreover, in order to promote research and transfer activities undertaken by university researchers and provide them with greater international visibility, the university is developing the UPF Research Park in the fields of social sciences, humanities, communication and information technologies. The UPF Research Park, which develops its activity at Ciutadella and Poblenou Campuses, coordinates its activities in the fields of health and life sciences with the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), located at Mar Campus.

University institutes and research centres

Research Centre for International Economics

The Research Centre for International Economics (Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI)) is a research institute sponsored by the government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) and the UPF led by the economist Jordi Galí. Its headquarters is on the campus of UPF in Barcelona, near the Department of Economics and Business at UPF (Ciutadella Campus), which collaborates in many research and teaching fields. The research activities are focused on international economics and macroeconomics (including growth, business cycles, monetary economics, macroeconometrics, trade and international finance, economic geography, etc.). It tries to emphasize these fields of studies in the European dimension.

Governance

Enric Argullol served as rector from the founding until June 2001, followed by M. Rosa Virós i Galtier (2001–2005), Josep Joan Moreso (2005–2013), Jaume Casals (2013–2021) and Oriol Amat (2021–2023). The current rector, Laia de Nadal, was elected in May 2023.

Rankings

The position of UPF is presented in the following international rankings: Times Higher Education (THE), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the one published by Shanghai University (ARWU), U-Multirank (promoted by the EU), and the Leiden ranking, which is focused on research.

Notable alumni

Notable faculty