The node of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) (Spanish National Research Council) is made up of three different institutions: the Institute of Material Science from Madrid (ICMM), the national Biotechnology Center (CNB) and the Institute of Material Science of Aragón (ICMA).

ICMM from Madrid is an institute founded in December 1986, that belongs to the Area of Science and Technology of Materials, one of the eight Areas in which the CSIC divides its research activities. Its mission is to create new fundamental and applied knowledge in materials of high technological impact, their processing and their transfer to the productive sectors at local, national and European scales (the true value of materials is in their use), the training of new professionals, and the dissemination of the scientific knowledge.

CNB has research activities in the areas of Virology, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Immunology and Oncology are interconnected transversally by potent scientific infrastructures and interdisciplinary research in the areas of Structural and Functional Biology and, since 2009, Systems Biology.

Finally, ICMA is a Joint Research Institute founded in 1985 following an agreement between the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Zaragoza (UZ). Following 25 years of continual growth, ICMA had 350 employees dedicated to research in “Material Science and Technology” and “Chemical Science and Technology”, with both areas becoming an International point of reference.