The SOCOTEC Chair at the University of Zaragoza Awards Excellence in Circular Engineering

The current consumer society is unsustainable. Circular economy is a more sustainable alternative that is based on reuse and recycling. Design and engineering play a fundamental role in the transition to circular economy.

Consolidating Talent in Circular Engineering

The SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair at the University of Zaragoza is a pioneer in Spain, being the first chair that specifically addresses circular engineering. In this sense, the chair seeks to generate knowledge, promote and disseminate activities that lead to awareness and education in circular engineering, transfer knowledge and research results, and train and thus consolidate new talent.

Ana M.ª Sanz Campos, director general of SMEs and Self-Employed Workers of the Government of Aragon, who also presided over the award ceremony, assured the students: “we are by your side in your project and be part of the transformation, through creativity and innovation, to build a better future with companies as true engines for the economy of Aragon”.

This first day of the award ceremony of the SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair constitutes an act of training and consolidation of the talent of university students who have just finished their studies and are entering the labor market.

In this sense, the director of the SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair, José Ramón Beltrán, affirmed that “the awards of the SOCOTEC Circular Chair are a sample of the talent that we generate as an institution. We want this talent to become useful proposals that can transcend the business world and give visibility to new opportunities in the circular economy”.

The SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair is convinced that society needs to progress towards economic, environmental and social sustainability, and this can only be conceived from a revolutionary design of products, facilities, processes, systems and businesses. For this, it is essential that engineering change its vision of the old linear model to the new circular conception.

SOCOTEC engineering together with the University of Zaragoza are references in innovation and knowledge transfer in circular engineering and sustainable development, as a source towards the progress of society.

The award ceremony of the SOCOTEC chair was presided over by Jesús Arnau, CEO of CEOE Aragón, María Tatiana Gaudés Lalmolda, councillor for Environment and Mobility of the City of Zaragoza, Ana M.ª Sanz Campos, director general of SMEs and Self-Employed Workers of the Government of Aragon, José Ángel Castellanos, vice-rector of academic policy of the University of Zaragoza, Francisco Serrano, technical secretary of the Official College of Industrial Engineers of Aragon and La Rioja, José Ramón Beltrán, director of the SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair, Ángela Laguna, president of the SOCOTEC Circular Engineering Chair and Guillem Baraut, CEO of SOCOTEC Spain.

Award-Winning Projects

Bachelor's Thesis Category 

• Matías Fabián Nepi - Energy rehabilitation of the residential park of Zaragoza. Greenhouse terrace strategy
• Isabel Lacruz Albás - Experimental characterization of the thermal behavior in a plate heat exchanger using water and an emulsion of phase change materials as a heat transfer fluid

Master's Thesis Category

• Adrián Les Pueyo - Study and characterization of circular processes in an electronic waste manager. Implementation of real-time production KPIs in an industrial environment
• Samuel Alcoceba Pascual - Efficiency in the use of material resources used in automotive electronic components. Case study of the SEAT León II instrument cluster