The Economic and Social Committee of the Valencian Community has awarded one of its 2025 Doctoral Thesis Awards to Iluminada Vallet Bellmunt, a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration and Marketing at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. The thesis, entitled "The resilience of independent retail: a model of antecedents and consequences", was supervised by Marisa Flor and Víctor del Corte and tutored by Teresa Vallet-Bellmunt.

The thesis, defended in December 2024 in the Interuniversity Doctoral Programme in Marketing, explores the factors that foster organisational resilience in small independent retailers and analyses how this capacity enhances innovation and business performance. The results highlight that the individual resilience of the owner and the entrepreneurial orientation of the business are two of the factors that drive organisational resilience.

In addition to the resilience and adaptability of the people who lead the businesses, organisational resilience is also influenced by the characteristics of the work team, the organisational structure, external networks and environmental conditions. The methodology was based on a closed-ended questionnaire, with 150 validated responses. The distribution of the businesses surveyed was 26.74% from Alicante, 11.42% from Castelló de la Plana and 61.84% from Valencia, representing different sectors such as food, drugstores and perfumeries, flowers, jewellery and watches, home, fashion, leisure, stationery and health.

The Bharat Innovates 2026 National Basecamp was inaugurated at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), marking a significant milestone in India’s efforts to identify, strengthen, and globally position its most promising deep-tech innovations. Held from December 18 to 20, 2025, the three-day event brings together approximately 400 startups and research-led innovations that have been shortlisted through a rigorous national screening process. Organised under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India, and coordinated jointly by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) and IITGN, the event saw attendance from scientific luminaries, founders, business leaders, venture capitalists, investors, and sci-tech enthusiasts. 

Speakers at the inaugural session highlighted the programme’s role in strengthening research commercialisation, industry–academia linkages, and policy-backed innovation ecosystems. The closed-door pitching sessions and open deep tech exhibition showcased Innovations spanning 13 strategic domains, including AI, semiconductors, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and space technologies. The Basecamp serves as a critical mentoring and evaluation stage ahead of the International Showcase to be held next year in France, where Indian technologies will take their place on the global stage. 

Formaldehyde, a highly toxic chemical, must be converted into value-added products. A recent paper by researchers from Chonnam National University presents an engineered enzyme system that converts the highly toxic formaldehyde into L-glyceraldehyde, a valuable chiral compound, with high selectivity and conversion efficiency in a sustainable, one-pot, water-based process. This technology can help better manage environmental pollutants, supporting greener chemical manufacturing.