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Latest news on the activity of the SENER Foundation, its engineeringscholarships and research awards.

SENER Foundation’s Best Doctoral Thesis Award in its second edition goes to a space-related study


For the second consecutive year, the SENER Foundation has delivered the Best Doctoral Thesis Award at an event held in the premises of the engineering and technology group SENER in Madrid (Spain), which was headed by Enrique de Sendagorta, President of the SENER Foundation and Honorary President of SENER.

The award, endowed with 12,000 Euros, has gone to Mario Merino, who took his doctorate degree at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in 2013 and is the author of the winning thesis “Analysis of magnetic nozzles for space plasma thrusters”. The thesis supervisor, Professor Eduardo Ahedo, has also been awarded 3,000 Euros.

This was the second time that the SENER Foundation grants this recognition, which aims to stimulate research at the highest level in the scientific and technological areas in which SENER operates, that is, in the fields of Aerospace, Power and Process, Infrastructures and Transport and Marine.

The jury, made up of chair professors of the aforementioned scientific and technology disciplines as well as doctorates belonging to SENER’s technical team and SENER Foundation trustees holding a doctor degree, has chosen Dr. Merino’s thesis, as stated by Juan Seijas, Director of the SENER Foundation, “for having a high technical level and providing an evident stimulus for advances in researching and learning within the company and also for representing an excellent base from where to strengthen cooperation between University and SENER”.

During the award-giving ceremony, Enrique de Sendagorta compared Dr. Mario Merino’s thesis with the defense argued by the economist Schumpeter claiming that “great inventions are those that can be called as constructive storm creators and are achieved through continued efforts, with small improvements, that combined lead to innovations that result in great assets”. Also the President of SENER, Jorge Sendagorta, had a few words and joined the congratulations of others, stressing that “a thesis like this ensures the development of a technology- and industry-based economy” and thanked the author for making possible for the SENER Foundation, thanks to his thesis, to meet “its objective of promoting engineering throughout the world and setting a very high bar for engineering in Spain”.

For his part, the author of the winning thesis, Mario Merino, thanked the SENER Foundation in his name and on behalf of the thesis supervisor “for this recognition of his work, all the more considering that it is given by a company like SENER. This award represents a unique incentive for a doctor in engineering at the beginning of his professional career and leads to the strengthening of the collaboration between the University Carlos III and SENER, thanks to which many great advantages will be enjoyed by both sides”.

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