BIAL Foundation

The BIAL Foundation was created in 1994 by the BIAL pharmaceutical company together with the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities. BIAL Foundation’s mission is to foster the scientific study of the human being from both the physical and spiritual perspectives. Along the years the BIAL Foundation has developed an important relationship with the scientific community, first in Portugal and then worldwide. Today it is a renowned institution, particularly in the Neuroscience and Parapsychology research, which aims to stimulate new researches that benefit people, providing more health and enabling new levels of knowledge. Among its activities the BIAL Foundation manages the Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica, created in 1984, which is focused on the enhancement of basic and clinical research. This award seeks to recognize an intellectual, original work on any freely chosen medical topic on clinical practice. The BIAL Award in Biomedicine was created in 2018 to recognise the most outstanding and relevant discoveries in the broad biomedical field. This award aims to distinguish a work with exceptional quality and scientific relevance results published within the last ten years. In 2020, to honour the memory of the great immunologist Maria de Sousa, the Portuguese Medical Association and the BIAL Foundation decided to promote, in partnership, the Maria de Sousa Award, to support young Portuguese researchers with scientific projects in the area of Health Sciences. The BIAL Foundation also supports scientific research projects for the neurophysiological and mental study of the human being, in the areas of Psychophysiology and Parapsychology. In 1996 the BIAL Foundation began to organize the Symposia "Behind and Beyond the Brain", a Forum that gathers world-renowned experts in neurosciences and parapsychology, as well as several researchers supported by the Foundation.