The Universidad Católica de Murcia and the INCYDE Foundation have renewed their collaboration agreement to further offer training programmes to promote employment and entrepreneurship. Held at UCAM HiTech, these courses are a great success, giving many young people the opportunity to acquire skills to start up their business idea or to establish themselves and improve their prospects in the labour market.

Javier Collado, General Director of the INCYDE Foundation, emphasised that it is mainly a question of following in the footsteps of the founder of the UCAM: ‘We are going to build on José Luis Mendoza's legacy by working on training and entrepreneurship programmes’. Estrella Núñez, UCAM Vice-Rector of Research recalled the vocation of the university to guide its students: ‘Students need to be well trained in entrepreneurship, research or innovation. We must manage talent in the right way so that they are able to find their niche in the labour market, while those who want to become entrepreneurs are given the necessary tools by their university’.

Green light for the new pilot plant

During the same meeting, the agreement to create the new preindustrial food processing plant, which will complement the services already offered by UCAM HiTech, was formalised. This step is very important for Collado as ‘it will provide service to small and medium-sized companies for them to make prototypes of their products and present them. There is no other facility like this in Europe, and it represents a commitment to entrepreneurship, innovation, start-ups and human capital’. According to Estrella Núñez, ‘research linked to the world of business may come from public funds, but also from private resources provided by the university or attracted to our region to promote entrepreneurship and innovation connected to the corporate world’.