General description 
The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, currently referred to as BarcelonaTech and commonly named just the UPC, is the largest engineering university in Catalonia, Spain. The university was founded in March 1971 through the merger of engineering and architecture schools founded in the 19th century. The UPC is a public university that carries out research and provides higher education in the fields of architecture, engineering, sciences and technology. At present, more than 40 diploma and degree courses can be studied at the UPC and doctoral degrees can be also obtained.
Two departments of UPC, integrated in the Advanced Broadband Communications Centre (CCABA, acronym of ‘Centre de Comunicacions Avançades de Banda Ampla‘) are involved in the project: the Computer Architecture Department (DAC) and the Signal Theory and Communications Department (TSC). The DAC is well known for its contributions to HPC and its linkage to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which manages one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe. The TSC Department is well known for its contributions to research topics related to information processing and optical networking. Until December 1998 the CCABA was in charge of the management of the UPC Spanish National Host platform. In October 1998, the CCABA has been designated as a Specific Research Center of the UPC.Researchers from CCABA have participated in many European research projects in the optical networking field, including intra-datacentre, optical core and access networks. Currently they are participating in several EU funded projects, including METROHAUL, where they are leading research activities focused on multilayer optical networking.