40 out of 2,000: Galicia points to the future of energy-efficient photonics, shining in the ultra-competitive European EIC Pathfinder call
The ‘bLOSSom’ project is emerging as one of only 44 proposals selected by the European Innovation Council (EIC) out of the 2,087 initiatives submitted to the Pathfinder call—one of Europe’s most demanding, with a success rate close to 2%. Institutions from Spain, Poland, Portugal, and Ireland will jointly advance a new generation of photonic systems that are practically energy self-sufficient, with strategic applications in artificial intelligence, data centers, and advanced microelectronics.
El CiTIUS (Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnologías Inteligentes de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) celebrates the award of a new, highly prestigious European project that will drive the development of photonic systems capable of powering themselves and drastically reducing energy consumption in artificial intelligence and large-scale data-processing applications.
Funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) with almost €3 million through the Pathfinder Open 2025 call, the international initiative bLOSSom —English acronym for Self-Sustained Photonic Systems through Autonomous LOSS Harvesting (Sistemas Fotónicos Autosostenidos mediante Captación Autónoma de Pérdidas Energéticas)— will combine frontier research and technological innovation with scientific leadership featuring a strong female presence.
This follows a remarkable achievement by the Galician research ecosystem, which managed to carry forward its collective proposal in an extremely competitive context, thereby obtaining support from one of the most competitive calls among the many EU programs that fund R&D in Europe.
Thus, of the 2,087 proposals submitted from 71 different countries in 2025 to the Horizon-EIC-2025-Pathfinder program, only 44 were funded by this innovation support program within the EU framework, endowed with more than €140 million to promote radically disruptive technologies at very early stages of development.
Coordination of this ambitious project, which officially started on March 1, will fall to the Galician Technological Telecommunications Center Foundation (Gradiant), which will lead an international consortium made up of organizations from Spain, Poland, Portugal and Ireland; among them, the Łukasiewicz research network (Poland), the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), F6S Network (Ireland), the CiTIUS itself and the center’s spin-off energHius. The project will run for the next four years.
Recovering lost energy
bLOSSom’s main research focus will be integrated photonics, the technology that uses light to process and transmit information within chips. Although this technology offers enormous advantages in speed and efficiency, its devices still generate energy losses during operation.
bLOSSom proposes to reuse so-called parasitic energy —that which is currently lost as heat or radiation in the photonic components themselves— to power the system, thereby harnessing a valuable amount of energy. An ambitious idea reflected in the project’s ultimate goal: to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and booting the system without relying on an external power source.
To achieve this, an integrated power management unit (Power Management Unit, PMU) will be developed to store and release energy on demand.
bLOSSom will work on the design of photonic systems capable of activating and powering themselves
One of the most ambitious objectives is to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and booting the system without relying on an external energy source. This advance could enable the development of ultra-massive modular photonic networks whose size can grow exponentially without a proportional increase in energy consumption.
Estimates point to reductions of between 100 and 1,000 times compared to current architectures, with direct implications for data centers, critical digital infrastructures, medical sensors and industrial robotics.
In a global scenario marked by technological competition and Europe’s dependence on strategic components manufactured outside the EU, initiatives like bLOSSom help strengthen technological sovereignty in advanced microelectronics and intelligent photonics in Europe.
Female leadership
Within the international consortium, CiTIUS will assume, together with energHius (a spin-off born from research developed at the center and established as a technology-based company at USC), the design of the system’s energy architecture.
“Our objective is to turn energy losses into the system’s own power source”, says Paula López
Scientific coordination of the CiTIUS team will be led by Paula López, deputy director of the USC research center and responsible for the heterogeneous integration plan of the system’s various components. The researcher, an expert in microchips, explains that “our challenge is to design an architecture capable of capturing, storing and reusing the energy that the photonic system itself generates and wastes. We are developing an autonomous power management unit in commercial CMOS technology that allows the system to start independently and ensures integration and interoperability between photonic and electronic components. The goal is to demonstrate that energy self-sufficiency in integrated photonics is viable and scalable.”
Alongside the person responsible for bLOSSom at CiTIUS, the center’s team is completed by researchers Víctor Brea and Fernando Pardo and pre-doctoral researcher Laura Vicente, reinforcing the technical dimension and the group’s female leadership in an area that is strategic for the energy and digital transition.
The involvement of energHius (the fifth spin-off of CiTIUS) also consolidates the connection between academic research and business innovation. The company was founded in March 2025 as the result of more than twenty years of research in ultra-low-power integrated circuit design, and its founding objective is to bring advanced micro-scale energy harvesting and management solutions to the market.
With this new recognition among the institutions supported by the leading body for funding the most cutting-edge projects in Europe, CiTIUS (a center co-financed by the European Union through the Galicia ERDF Program 2021-2027) consolidates its position in advanced microelectronics and energy-efficient artificial intelligence, strengthening USC’s role as an international hub of technological innovation and contributing to the reinforcement of Europe’s strategic autonomy.
El CiTIUS (Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnologías Inteligentes de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) celebrates the award of a new, highly prestigious European project that will drive the development of photonic systems capable of powering themselves and drastically reducing energy consumption in artificial intelligence and large-scale data-processing applications.
Funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) with almost €3 million through the Pathfinder Open 2025 call, the international initiative bLOSSom —English acronym for Self-Sustained Photonic Systems through Autonomous LOSS Harvesting (Sistemas Fotónicos Autosostenidos mediante Captación Autónoma de Pérdidas Energéticas)— will combine frontier research and technological innovation with scientific leadership featuring a strong female presence.
This follows a remarkable achievement by the Galician research ecosystem, which managed to carry forward its collective proposal in an extremely competitive context, thereby obtaining support from one of the most competitive calls among the many EU programs that fund R&D in Europe.
Thus, of the 2,087 proposals submitted from 71 different countries in 2025 to the Horizon-EIC-2025-Pathfinder program, only 44 were funded by this innovation support program within the EU framework, endowed with more than €140 million to promote radically disruptive technologies at very early stages of development.
Coordination of this ambitious project, which officially started on March 1, will fall to the Galician Technological Telecommunications Center Foundation (Gradiant), which will lead an international consortium made up of organizations from Spain, Poland, Portugal and Ireland; among them, the Łukasiewicz research network (Poland), the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), F6S Network (Ireland), the CiTIUS itself and the center’s spin-off energHius. The project will run for the next four years.
Recovering lost energy
bLOSSom’s main research focus will be integrated photonics, the technology that uses light to process and transmit information within chips. Although this technology offers enormous advantages in speed and efficiency, its devices still generate energy losses during operation.
bLOSSom proposes to reuse so-called parasitic energy —that which is currently lost as heat or radiation in the photonic components themselves— to power the system, thereby harnessing a valuable amount of energy. An ambitious idea reflected in the project’s ultimate goal: to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and booting the system without relying on an external power source.
To achieve this, an integrated power management unit (Power Management Unit, PMU) will be developed to store and release energy on demand.
bLOSSom will work on the design of photonic systems capable of activating and powering themselves
One of the most ambitious objectives is to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and booting the system without relying on an external energy source. This advance could enable the development of ultra-massive modular photonic networks whose size can grow exponentially without a proportional increase in energy consumption.
Estimates point to reductions of between 100 and 1,000 times compared to current architectures, with direct implications for data centers, critical digital infrastructures, medical sensors and industrial robotics.
In a global scenario marked by technological competition and Europe’s dependence on strategic components manufactured outside the EU, initiatives like bLOSSom help strengthen technological sovereignty in advanced microelectronics and intelligent photonics in Europe.
Female leadership
Within the international consortium, CiTIUS will assume, together with energHius (a spin-off born from research developed at the center and established as a technology-based company at USC), the design of the system’s energy architecture.
“Our objective is to turn energy losses into the system’s own power source”, says Paula López
Scientific coordination of the CiTIUS team will be led by Paula López, deputy director of the USC research center and responsible for the heterogeneous integration plan of the system’s various components. The researcher, an expert in microchips, explains that “our challenge is to design an architecture capable of capturing, storing and reusing the energy that the photonic system itself generates and wastes. We are developing an autonomous power management unit in commercial CMOS technology that allows the system to start independently and ensures integration and interoperability between photonic and electronic components. The goal is to demonstrate that energy self-sufficiency in integrated photonics is viable and scalable.”
Alongside the person responsible for bLOSSom at CiTIUS, the center’s team is completed by researchers Víctor Brea and Fernando Pardo and pre-doctoral researcher Laura Vicente, reinforcing the technical dimension and the group’s female leadership in an area that is strategic for the energy and digital transition.
The involvement of energHius (the fifth spin-off of CiTIUS) also consolidates the connection between academic research and business innovation. The company was founded in March 2025 as the result of more than twenty years of research in ultra-low-power integrated circuit design, and its founding objective is to bring advanced micro-scale energy harvesting and management solutions to the market.
With this new recognition among the institutions supported by the leading body for funding the most cutting-edge projects in Europe, CiTIUS (a center co-financed by the European Union through the Galicia ERDF Program 2021-2027) consolidates its position in advanced microelectronics and energy-efficient artificial intelligence, strengthening USC’s role as an international hub of technological innovation and contributing to the reinforcement of Europe’s strategic autonomy.
