40 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 making its way as one of the 44 unique proposals selected by the European Innovation Council (EIC) from among the 2,087 initiatives submitted to the Pathfinder call—one of the most demanding in Europe, with a success rate close to 2%. Institutions from Spain, Poland, Portugal, and Ireland will jointly drive a new generation of photonic systems that are practically self-sufficient from an energy standpoint, with strategic applications in artificial intelligence, data centers, and advanced microelectronics.
CiTIUS (Singular Research Center in Intelligent Technologies of the University of Santiago de Compostela) is celebrating the achievement of a new top-prestige 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 nearly 3 million euros through the Pathfinder Open 2025 call, the international initiative bLOSSom—English acronym for _Self-Sustained Photonic Systems through Autonomous LOSS Harvesting_—will combine frontier research and technological innovation with scientific leadership marked by strong female representation.
It does so following a unique achievement by the Galician research ecosystem, which managed to move forward with its joint proposal in a scenario of maximum difficulty, consequently gaining the support of 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 obtained funding from this innovation support scheme under the EU framework, which is endowed with more than 140 million euros to foster radically disruptive technologies in very early stages of development.
Coordination of this ambitious project, which officially started on March 1, will be the responsibility of the Fundación Centro Tecnolóxico de Telecomunicacións de Galicia (Gradiant), which will lead an international consortium made up of entities from Spain, Poland, Portugal and Ireland; among them, the Łukasiewicz research network (Poland), the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), F6S Network (Ireland), CiTIUS itself and the center’s spin-off energHius. The project will run for the next four years.
Recovering lost energy
The main research focus of bLOSSom 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—the energy currently lost as heat or radiation in the photonic components themselves—to power the system, thus harnessing a valuable amount of energy. This ambitious idea is reflected in the project’s ultimate goal: to enable devices to operate with external energy needs close to zero.
To achieve this, electro-optical interfaces will be developed that are capable of converting optical signals into electrical ones and directing that energy toward an integrated Power Management Unit (PMU), which will store and release energy on demand.
bLOSSom will work on designing photonic systems capable of activating and powering themselves
The project will explore various technological solutions, ranging from advanced electro-optical junctions to the use of two-dimensional materials (such as graphene) or systems inspired by photosynthetic mechanisms recreated in the laboratory. One of the most ambitious goals is to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and activating the system without relying on an external power source.
This advance could enable the development of ultra-massive modular photonic networks and neuromorphic solutions (artificial intelligence architectures inspired by the human brain) 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 infrastructure, 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 take on, together with energHius (a spin-off arising from research carried out at the center itself and established as a technology-based company at USC), the design of the system’s energy architecture.
“Our goal 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 USC’s research center and head of the heterogeneous integration plan for the different system components. The microchip expert 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 up independently and guarantees integration and interoperability between photonic and electronic components. The goal is to prove that energy self-sufficiency in integrated photonics is both viable and scalable.”
Alongside the bLOSSom lead at CiTIUS, the center’s team is completed by researchers Víctor Brea and Fernando Pardo and predoctoral researcher Laura Vicente, strengthening the group’s technical depth and female leadership in a strategic area for the energy and digital transition.
The involvement of energHius (the fifth CiTIUS spin-off) further 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 core mission is to bring advanced energy harvesting and management solutions at the micrometric scale to the market.
With this new recognition among the institutions backed by the leading body for funding Europe’s most cutting-edge projects, CiTIUS (a center co-funded by the European Union through the Galicia Feder 2021–2027 Program) consolidates its position in advanced microelectronics and energy-efficient artificial intelligence, reinforcing USC’s role as an international hub of technological innovation and contributing to the strengthening of Europe’s strategic autonomy.
CiTIUS (Singular Research Center in Intelligent Technologies of the University of Santiago de Compostela) is celebrating the achievement of a new top-prestige 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 nearly 3 million euros through the Pathfinder Open 2025 call, the international initiative bLOSSom—English acronym for _Self-Sustained Photonic Systems through Autonomous LOSS Harvesting_—will combine frontier research and technological innovation with scientific leadership marked by strong female representation.
It does so following a unique achievement by the Galician research ecosystem, which managed to move forward with its joint proposal in a scenario of maximum difficulty, consequently gaining the support of 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 obtained funding from this innovation support scheme under the EU framework, which is endowed with more than 140 million euros to foster radically disruptive technologies in very early stages of development.
Coordination of this ambitious project, which officially started on March 1, will be the responsibility of the Fundación Centro Tecnolóxico de Telecomunicacións de Galicia (Gradiant), which will lead an international consortium made up of entities from Spain, Poland, Portugal and Ireland; among them, the Łukasiewicz research network (Poland), the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), F6S Network (Ireland), CiTIUS itself and the center’s spin-off energHius. The project will run for the next four years.
Recovering lost energy
The main research focus of bLOSSom 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—the energy currently lost as heat or radiation in the photonic components themselves—to power the system, thus harnessing a valuable amount of energy. This ambitious idea is reflected in the project’s ultimate goal: to enable devices to operate with external energy needs close to zero.
To achieve this, electro-optical interfaces will be developed that are capable of converting optical signals into electrical ones and directing that energy toward an integrated Power Management Unit (PMU), which will store and release energy on demand.
bLOSSom will work on designing photonic systems capable of activating and powering themselves
The project will explore various technological solutions, ranging from advanced electro-optical junctions to the use of two-dimensional materials (such as graphene) or systems inspired by photosynthetic mechanisms recreated in the laboratory. One of the most ambitious goals is to develop an integrated photonic module capable of powering itself and activating the system without relying on an external power source.
This advance could enable the development of ultra-massive modular photonic networks and neuromorphic solutions (artificial intelligence architectures inspired by the human brain) 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 infrastructure, 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 take on, together with energHius (a spin-off arising from research carried out at the center itself and established as a technology-based company at USC), the design of the system’s energy architecture.
“Our goal 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 USC’s research center and head of the heterogeneous integration plan for the different system components. The microchip expert 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 up independently and guarantees integration and interoperability between photonic and electronic components. The goal is to prove that energy self-sufficiency in integrated photonics is both viable and scalable.”
Alongside the bLOSSom lead at CiTIUS, the center’s team is completed by researchers Víctor Brea and Fernando Pardo and predoctoral researcher Laura Vicente, strengthening the group’s technical depth and female leadership in a strategic area for the energy and digital transition.
The involvement of energHius (the fifth CiTIUS spin-off) further 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 core mission is to bring advanced energy harvesting and management solutions at the micrometric scale to the market.
With this new recognition among the institutions backed by the leading body for funding Europe’s most cutting-edge projects, CiTIUS (a center co-funded by the European Union through the Galicia Feder 2021–2027 Program) consolidates its position in advanced microelectronics and energy-efficient artificial intelligence, reinforcing USC’s role as an international hub of technological innovation and contributing to the strengthening of Europe’s strategic autonomy.
