• The ceremony was attended by Isabel Pardo de Vera, Secretary of State for Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Guillermo Cisneros, rector of the UPM and Elena Salgado, president of the Abertis Foundation.
• For the first time in its history, the Abertis awards leave the strictly university sphere and adopt the environment of the media as a stage, to bring and explain to society as a whole the academic, research and innovation activities of our centers of excellence and of young researchers.
• The awards were preceded by two debates led by relevant actors in the field of mobility, addressing the importance of topics such as innovation, governance models, sustainability or European policies for this sector and, therefore, in its impact on economic recovery.

The Abertis Chairs, associated with the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), today presented its Abertis Awards in research on Management of Transport Infrastructures and Road Safety in Spain, corresponding to the 17th and 17th editions XVIII, in its two categories: Management of Transport Infrastructures and Road Safety. It is a distinction that recognizes the best doctoral theses or end-of-degree projects of university students from all over Spain, related to the management of road infrastructures in all its aspects, whether technical or managerial, social or economic.

In the 17th edition of the awards (corresponding to the 2019 call), the award in the category of Transport Infrastructure Management has gone to Dr. Marcel Sala, from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, for the doctoral thesis Modeling present and future freeway management strategies: Variable speed limits, lane-changing and platooning of connected autonomous vehicles. As a finalist in this category, the award has been awarded to Dr. Álvaro Rodríguez, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, author of the thesis Uncertainty management and performance optimization in airport operations using probabilistic reasoning and reinforcement learning techniques. And in the Road Safety category, the winner was Dr. Jesús Balado, from the University of Vigo, with his thesis Classification and modeling of urban environments from point clouds for physical accessibility diagnosis and pedestrian pathfinding. The overall amount of the 2019 Abertis awards in Spain this year amounts to a total of 14,000 euros.

Regarding the 18th edition (2020 call) of these awards, the thesis of Dr. Manuel Fuentes from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Operations planning and Management in transport logistics, has been awarded in the category of Management of Transport Infrastructures. For its part, in the Road Safety category, the winner was Dr. Miguel Clavijo, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, with his doctoral thesis Reconstruction of the vehicle environment for autonomous guidance in complex scenarios. Each of the awards has a financiar prize of 7,000 euros.

The winners will become finalists for the Abertis International Award, which is chosen annually from among the winners of all the countries where the Abertis Chairs are established, and whose jury is scheduled to meet next October.

Elena Salgado, president of the Abertis Foundation and the rector of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Guillermo Cisneros, participated in the award ceremony.

Prior to the awards ceremony, two colloquia were held within the ABC Forum of Sustainable Economy, proposed in tune with the conceptual framework of the activities of the chair and closed by the Secretary of State for Transportation, Mobility and Urban Agenda , Isabel Pardo de Vera.

Under the title "University and Innovation: the mobility sector and the infrastructure sector", representatives of relevant actors in the field of mobility such as SEAT, Abertis, SEOPAN, the Spanish Road Association together with experts from the UPC and the UPM, have debated on the contribution from the university to innovation and improvement of the road infrastructure sector and also on the impacts that the technical performance and environmental requirements that the means of transport of the future.

During the event, José Aljaro, CEO of Abertis, placed special emphasis on the need to agree on an efficient, fair and sustainable model to provide us with the road infrastructures that we need both in the present and in the future, and that will incorporate important advances in matter of digitization and environmental efficiency and other technologies that we must be able to plan and address now. 

For her part, Elena Salgado, President of the Abertis Foundation, placed special emphasis on vindicating the recognition and active participation of the university world and the experts from the centers of excellence in our country in order to solve the challenges effectively and sustainably. present and future that present our mobility needs. 

International Network of Abertis Chairs

Aware of the importance of links with the academic world for social and economic progress, Abertis promotes training, research and the transfer of knowledge between the University and the Company. Through the International Network of Abertis Chairs, the generation and dissemination of new knowledge and innovations in the different fields of activity is promoted, putting them at the service of the whole of society and the technical and educational community and caring for and helping the talent that universities are capable of. to surface and channel.

The network of Abertis Chairs is made up of those established in Spain (Polytechnic University of Madrid and Polytechnic University of Barcelona, BarcelonaTech), France (École des Ponts_x0002_ParisTech), Puerto Rico (University of Puerto Rico), Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Brazil (University of São Paulo). And this same year, the chair in Mexico, with the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and Italy, with the University of Padua, joined the Network

Launch of the new corporate website of the International Network of Abertis Chairs

For its part, the International Network of Abertis Chairs has just launched at an international level its new corporate website www.abertischairs.com, with a renewed design, to adapt it to the growth of the Network and facilitate access to all its contents.

This site offers a wide menu in which all the Abertis Chairs, the different contact points in each university and the calls for all national awards are explained, the company's Innovation Platform is presented and the latest news of the International Network. In addition to giving visibility to the Chairs, one of the most outstanding functions of the web is to serve as a search engine and information manager, with a historical record of all the winning academic works, segmented by country or category, among others. These are just some of the new features designed to improve the user experience.

• Press Release