Tecnun engineering students TecnunAinhoa Genua and María Díaz, have been recognized for the socio-environmental impact of their projects. Specifically, they have received the first award of the second edition of the contest Tecnun Campus Sostenible, whose goal is to reward works of end of Degree and Master's Degree that contribute to sustainable development , as well as to promote a culture of sustainability among the student body, as explained by the professor and coordinator of the initiative, Carmen Jaca.

In this second edition, the engineers Eduardo Bilbao, Jorge Izaguirre, Guillermo Griñán and Javier Troyano also received runners-up prizes.  

"The platform I developed at MIT City Science will have an impact on the cities of the future."

Ainhoa Genua (Mechanical Engineer'20) was studying the Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering at Tecnun when she got a place at MIT City Science to carry out her End of Degree project Master's Degree . The young engineer was sample very grateful for the recognition of a project that, with the help of MIT City Science and supervised by Tecnun professor Leire Labaka, analyzes autonomous micromobility.

Notably, MIT City Science's group of research has developed autonomous micromobility services as a potential solution to the challenges of mobility in the current accelerated urbanization paradigm, and Ainhoa Genua's work has focused on analyzing the fleet-level performance as well as the environmental impacts of this new form of mobility for food delivery. "The growth of the global population, mainly concentrated in urban areas, as well as the increasing popularity of on-demand services, such as home food delivery, are generating a number of challenges in the area of transportation," narrates the student. "Thanks to the ultralight design and autonomous driving technology, these vehicles are much more efficient and environmentally friendly than cars for urban commuting," Genua emphasizes.

Likewise, and after a year of work at the prestigious laboratory in Boston, Ainhoa Genua developed an interactive platform that facilitates decision-making based on the results obtained, which could have an impact on the cities of the future. It is worth mentioning that this project is on display at the MIT City Science.

 "There's more to it than recycling. The social impact tends to be forgotten."

The Industrial Technologies Engineering student María Díaz developed her final project Degree in the department of Industrial Organization of Tecnun, motivated by her interest in the Economics Circular. Directed by Professor Carmen Jaca, the student has created a tool that analyzes products at the micro level, with the goal to give use to the different components or materials of a product and, therefore, prolong its life cycle. "I have developed an intuitive and flexible tool to give the possibility to evaluate totally different products," says Diaz.

As he explains, after analyzing "many of the existing tools, I noticed that there is no universal tool , but that there are many and with different results, mainly due to the lack of consensus on the term Economics Circular". He also recognizes the importance of the social impact since "the Economics Circular has a triple aspect (economic, social, environmental) and there is much more to it than just recycling".