AIC to add more heft to Deusto Smart Moto Challenge

Center signs specific agreement with University of Deusto to develop university students’ abilities in management, design, production and marketing | 01/02/2016

AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center and the University of Deusto (UD) are continuing with their policy of developing the abilities of current and future Basque automotive industry professionals through a series of joint initiatives.

In 2016 AIC has already committed to giving major backing to DEUSTO MOTO TEAM, designed to enable 35 students from all specialities at the UD Faculty of Engineering to develop their talents in management, design, production and marketing, by fabricating two electric motorbikes. The team is set to take part in the international Smart Moto Challenge competition to be held in Barcelona in July 2016.

Open to university students from all over the world, SmartMoto Challenge looks to promote the production of an electric motorbike from design to manufacture. The idea is to give students the chance to get involved in a real project and use what they have learnt at university, while acquiring genuine experience as team-working engineers of the future. The competition also involves designing a business plan focused on industrialization and sales of the fully developed bike.

AIC CEO Inés Anitua said “these initiatives are very rewarding for the students because they get a taste of the real world they’ll be facing in just a couple years’ time”.

In the words of UD dean Inés Jacob, the Engineering Faculty was looking to “train people in the values of the Deusto University Project and instill in them the kind of knowledge of engineering that will prepare them to lead the kind of technological developments now emerging in society today”.

“What we are presenting today is the latest step in the implementation of this teaching philosophy. Students from the Engineering Faculty at the University of Deusto are going to design, develop and fabricate two functional prototypes of electric, internet-connected police bikes“.

In July 2010 AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center and Deusto University signed a Framework Cooperation Agreement that set out the conditions for cooperation between the two organizations under which they would modernize and develop the capabilities of current and future professionals in the Basque automotive industry through student training (End of Career Projects and In-House Training Grants) and postgraduate training (Recycling for Working Professionals).

Since then a number of initiatives have been launched, including the Automotive Engineering Specialist Diploma and the Advanced Production Management Program.

AIC founders and backers include Bizkaia Provincial Council, the Amorebieta-Etxano and Ermua city halls, a group of cutting-edge companies from the automotive sector and Basque automotive cluster ACICAE. AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center is an open innovation center that hosts know-how, training, technology and industrial development initiatives under a single umbrella that are designed to improve competitive levels in the automotive industry. More than 700 people from 30 organizations work at AIC facilities.

For nearly 40 years the University of Deusto’s Engineering Faculty has offered graduate engineering courses, originally in computer sciences, and subsequently in industrial and telecommunications engineering. From the first, training has been backed by major scientific and technology research capabilities. Using a student-centered teaching-learning model, the student develops his or her skills in an ecosystem linked to the labor market. Deusto-trained engineers achieve competencies recognized and prized by the companies that hire the university’s graduates