Jesús Jiménez Octavio takes office as new director of Comillas ICAI

After thanking the outgoing director, Antonio Muñoz San Roque, for his work and his teachings, which have allowed him to take the helm of Comillas ICAI, Jiménez Octavio assured that it is a school with history, with a present and with a future, which "today inaugurates a stage of continuity: with the serenity of what we already are and with the audacity of what we want to become".

This desire to become means "maintaining our ambition to have a cutting-edge academic offer of recognised prestige, strengthening internationalisation, and generating spaces and avenues for reflection to offer new responses to current challenges", he said, highlighting the Institute for Research in Technology (IIT)'s capacity to attract talent, research and transfer.

He also stressed that society needs engineers more than ever. "The hope for a fairer, more humane and sustainable world needs us to decarbonise and adapt to a climate that is already here; to guarantee universal and equitable access to energy, water, health...; to make cities habitable and efficient, with safe and accessible mobility; to strengthen critical infrastructures; to ensure food from the field to the table with robust cold chains and less waste... and for progress to reach everyone".

Jiménez Octavio will replace Antonio Muñoz San Roque, who has been director of Comillas ICAI for more than seven years. In his farewell address, he stated that "Comillas ICAI is in a spectacular moment, both for the students, as well as for the teaching staff, the administrative and service staff and researchers, and I thank all the people who have accompanied me during these years". He also referred to the challenges and to the fact that we must "give ICAI's history a chance with a positive outlook, because we are in a privileged situation that allows us to face the future with ambition".

For his part, the Rector, Antonio Allende SJ, thanked Muñoz for his ability to listen, as well as for his leadership and team building. In addition, he highlighted "the work model and the virtuous circle of research, teaching and transfer at Comillas ICAI which, supported by the IIT, results in shared values, and clear objectives and awareness of its own identity and service to society". And he asked the new director to "continue to make this school of engineering a university benchmark that goes beyond our borders and to maintain the objective of sending engineers to the world who, in addition to being competent, are people with profound human and Christian values".