GrandIR: Who we are

  GrandIR startup was founded on Dec 2010 by three collegues from the Carlos III University Library in Madrid, Spain. Their goal was to provide technical services for implementing Research Information Management Solutions (mainly Open Access repositories) to the community of universities and research centres in Spain and beyond. The challenge lies in providing these technical services in an agile way from outside the institutions, playing the role of a reliable technical partner with regard to them - not just for dealing with specific technical issues, but also for doing joint scholarly work and project bids.


As of March 2012, GrandIR are:

Pablo de Castro, BSc in Physics, is Director and co-founder of GrandIR. He previously worked in communication and dissemination tasks for the e-archivo Institutional Repository (IR) team at the Carlos III University Library in Madrid. He also managed the Digital.CSIC project for setting up and developing an IR at the Spanish National Research Council/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Since June 2009, he coordinates the JISC-funded SONEX Workgroup for Scholarly Output Notification & EXchange, which performs analysis of interoperability issues with regard to research information systems.

Mariano Navarro, GrandIR co-founder and Technology Manager, is Engineer in Computer Science. He previously worked at the Computer Support Service for the Carlos III University Library and in the Bank Management System sector. He contributes extensive expertise in programming and administration environments, as well as wide skills in the installation, customization and administration of content management platforms. As GrandIR Technnology Manager, he is in charge of providing the required support for specific technical challenges - relying for this purpose on a network of external collaborators when required.

Miguel Almazán, GrandIR co-founder and Webmaster, studies Communication Systems Engineering at UC3M. Having also worked at the Carlos III University Library, he provides a technical and a content-oriented background at the same time. He currently deals with GrandIR website and social network profile maintenance while supplying additional technical expertise on development work.