Valencia – 26.02.19. The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Fundación Valenciaport have held this morning an information exchange day with the aim of informing UPV researchers about the port’s operations environment and its main lines of research, in order to assess the possibility of proposing joint projects.

The conference, which is part of the UPV – Valenciaport Foundation Matching Programme, was inaugurated by the Director of the Port Authority of Valencia (APV), Francesc Sánchez; the Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and Transfer at the UPV, José E. Capilla; the Director General of the Valenciaport Foundation, Antonio Torregrosa; and the Director of the UPV’s School of Civil Engineering, Vicent Esteban Chapapría.

For his part, Ramón Gómez Ferrer-Boldova, Head of Strategy and Innovation at the APV, gave a presentation on the Port of Valencia and Salvador Furió, Director of the Innovation and Development Area of the Valenciaport Foundation Cluster, presented the innovation lines and projects of Valenciaport, including the digital transformation, with the application of new tools such as Big Data or Blockchain; sustainability, which would include energy efficiency and environmental management; maritime safety and security or corporate social responsibility.

Next, a presentation of the new call of the Agència Valenciana de la Innovació was made by Roberto Arnau, Deputy Director General of Innovation Programmes of the aforementioned entity.

Finally, the UPV’s working groups were presented, including the Department of Information Systems and Computing; the Research Group on Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence; the Institute of Automation and Industrial Computing – Ai2; the Technological Institute of Information Technology – ITI; the Research Group on Reengineering, Organisation, Group Work and Business Logistics – ROGLE; the University Institute of Energy Engineering – IIE; and the University Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering – IIAMA, among others.

The day ended with a visit to the facilities of APM Terminals Valencia.

Although both entities have been collaborating for years, both in training and in research, the aim of this Matching Programme between UPV and Fundación Valenciaport is to increase this cooperation and to bring the port environment even closer to research and innovation as a privileged field for the experimentation of initiatives of this type. Thanks to this programme, the Valenciaport Foundation will bring the UPV closer to companies in the port area in order to incorporate them as partners in projects, for which it will obtain external funding to undertake them.