The University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) and the Cuenca-based company Incarlopsa have presented the ‘Incarlopsa-UCLM Open Innovation Chair’ through a partnership agreement geared to the promotion of activities involving research and transfer, training and scientific dissemination
The chancellor of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), Julián Garde, and the CEO of the company Incarlopsa, Clemente Loriente, have presented the new ‘Incarlopsa-UCLM Open Innovation Chair’ at the Cuenca Campus, the purpose of which is the promotion of research and transfer activities and the advancement of scientific training and dissemination. The Government of Castilla-La Mancha Managing Director of Universities, Research and Innovation, Ricardo Cuevas, also took part in the event.
The agreement for the creation of this new university-business chair aims to highlight the nutritional and healthy properties of fresh meat and cured ham, in addition to making society aware of the commitment of Incarlopsa to being a responsible company both with regard to the impact of the company´s production processes on the environment and its involvement and socio-economic importance within the scope of the Castilla-La Mancha business scenario.
The chancellor of UCLM, who was accompanied at the event by the vice-chancellor for Innovation, Employment and Entrepreneurship, Ángela González, and the vice-chancellor for Culture, Sport and Social Responsibility, César Sánchez, expressed his thanks for the work carried out in recent months for the launch of this initiative, “which reinforces research and transfer activities, in addition to training and dissemination, all of which are addressed by different research groups of our University”. In particular, he stressed that “more than 80% of the total budget for this new university-business chair has been allocated to research projects conducted by UCLM researchers”, thereby responding two of the biggest challenges we face, focused on research par excellence and the transfer of knowledge to society.
In turn, the CEO of Incarlopsa, Clemente Loriente, pointed out that “this new university-business chair reinforces our commitment to R&D, to which we have allocated over 23 million euros in the last two years. We believe that public-private partnerships are essential for the creation of a model of applied innovation designed to benefit society. This is why we at Incarlopsa promote working together with different research and knowledge centres such as the University of Castilla-La Mancha, the Complutense University of Madrid, the universities of Extremadura, Leon and Murcia and the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in addition to institutions such as the Institute for Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC), the National Institute for Agrarian Research (INIA), the Institute for Agri-food Research and Technologies (IRTA) and the Food Industry Research Association (AINIA)”.
Furthermore, the Government of Castilla-La Mancha managing director of Universities, Research and Innovation, Ricardo Cuevas, highlighted “the importance of both this agreement and of partnerships in terms of research and innovation in our region”.
The directors of the new university-business chair will be Juan Antonio Mondéjar Jiménez, a professor of marketing and market research at the Cuenca School of Social Sciences, and Mª Almudena Soriano Pérez, a professor of food technology at the School of Chemical Sciences and Technology, once the selection process conducted by the UCLM vice president of Transfer and Innovation has been concluded.
2021 work plan
The new chair´s first work script for the year 2021 has already been defined, which is broken down into six initiatives and plans to address four research projects encompassing Incarlopsa´s entire value chain
In turn, a competition with prizes for the best degree and master’s degree theses for UCLM students involving the analysis of the chair´s areas of activity has been planned, together with the inclusion of a summer course in the regional university´s 2021 schedule. In addition, new research groups at UCLM have been contacted and plans have been drawn up to continue exploring other opportunities for innovation and the transfer of knowledge in areas of interest to the company.