The Talent program of inLab FIB has won the 24th UPC Award for Quality in University Teaching 2021 in the Teaching Initiative Award category. The Talent program’s mission is to achieve, through curricular or extracurricular student internships, a comprehensive training of the student that complements the one obtained with the ordinary follow-up of the studies and is currently led by Professor Ernest Teniente, Director of inLab FIB, and Professor Maria Ribera Sancho, Head of the Talent Program and Associate Director of inLab FIB, both from the Department of Services and Information Systems Engineering.
The award is granted by the Social Council of the UPC, in order to encourage excellence in the teaching function at the University. The jury of this edition has highlighted that “this educational initiative is a complementary program to the studies, aimed at FIB students and open to other UPC students, to facilitate a comprehensive learning, through the incorporation of the student to a tutored professional work environment. In this way, it boosts their capacity for entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. The program combines the work of academic and professional tutors and, for the participating students, the link with their studies is mainly through their bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral thesis. According to the jury, this initiative “has contributed to the projection of computer engineering studies, mainly in the areas of innovation, technology transfer and social recognition”.
The award would not have been possible without the work led for many years by Professor Josep Casanovas, Director of inLab FIB until mid-2020, carried out by a large teaching team from different departments (Statistics and Operations Research, Services and Information Systems Engineering (Systems Engineering, Automation and Industrial Informatics; and Computer Architecture) and which has had the fundamental participation of a team of professionals from the administration and services staff of the Faculty of Computer Science of Barcelona.
The Talent program has recently been recognized by the ACUP (Catalan Association of Public Universities) as one of the best teaching practices in Catalan universities (ACUP news). A short video with the motivation for the creation of the program and a summary of the results achieved can be viewed at: ACUP video.