Abengoa and the Loyola University Andalusia Foundation have signed an agreement for the constitution of the Loyola-Abengoa Research Center, which was created with the aim of becoming the first joint R&D center between the University and the company focused on promoting the development of teaching and research activities around renewable energies and sustainable development.
The agreement, ratified by the president of the Loyola Andalusia University Foundation (ULA), Ildefonso Camacho, and the technical general secretary of Abengoa, José Domínguez Abascal, states that the Palmas Altas Campus of the Andalusian firm in Seville will be the headquarters of this center, which expects to have more than a hundred senior researchers in about six years, contributed equally by the two entities.
The agreement, which will have an initial duration of ten years, also contemplates cooperation in the academic areas; R&D&I; technical, technological and consulting studies; studies of social and environmental programmes; development cooperation and European programmes. Research areas include materials and nanotechnology, fluid mechanics, biotechnology and biomass, thermal and process engineering, electrical networks, law, economics and social sciences.
The center will begin working and incorporating researchers in 2011 with abengoa, which will begin the hiring process in a month and is already working on the constitution of a new company linked to the Andalusian multinational, Abengoa Research. Once the ULA is operational, from 2013, it will be integrated into the center, to which it intends to contribute about 50 professors and researchers.
Abengoa's technical general secretary, José Domínguez Abascal, explains that Abengoa decided to set up its own research center, but opted for the option of mixed facilities after analyzing the advantages of working with the University. "The purpose is not to wait for the University to be in operation to start working, but to integrate once it opens," says the director, who makes it clear that researchers who can give the maximum potential internationally will be selected.
Likewise, the president of the ULA Foundation and ETEA, Ildefonso Camacho, values the implementation of this center linked to a University where "we want to give an integral training to people, not only creating professionals, but also humanists".
For his part, the director of ETEA and vice president of the ULA Foundation, Gabriel Pérez Alcalá, indicates that the center was born with a commitment to knowledge and thought as "the engine of the economy of the new century and its closest environment, in Andalusia". Thus, he adds that in Andalusia there is a "very important journey" to do in the field of the University, where the ULA offers "a different training offer".
"Knowledge cannot remain in the ivory tower of the academy, but has to reach society and reach the citizen," he insists.
The research center will also be a common space for the training of professionals oriented to R&D&I activities and a high-level scientific and technological forum capable of proposing solutions for the future of the areas of renewable energies and sustainable development.
HOMOLOGATION OF LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
Loyola University Andalusia, led by the Society of Jesus, plans to begin classes in the 2013-2014 academic year and complete its comprehensive operation in 2017, with both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In this sense, Camacho explains that it is in the process of homologation with the Junta de Andalucía, but that there are no "substantive difficulties for this situation to be questioned", since it is a "solid and well-founded" project.
In the same vein, Pérez Alcalá points to a "permanent contact and a process of open dialogue" with the Junta de Andalucía to gradually resolve the problems of the procedure. Thus, he recalls that there are "many procedures to overcome to provide a public service, such as education, something that is very good to offer the relevant guarantees of development." (EUROPA PRESS)
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