This newspaper launches a new university channel, La Uni, a platform with the aim of amplifying the voice of universities in all their dimensions, as institutions and as generators of knowledge. “The information potential of universities is enormous”, stated Jordi Juan, director of La Vanguardia, at the presentation ceremony held yesterday at the CosmoCaixa in the presence of the rectors of the University of Barcelona, ??Joan Guàrdia, of the Autònoma from Barcelona, ??Javier Lafuente, and from the Polytechnic of Catalonia, Daniel Crespo. “And the newspaper, with its physical limitations, or the web, with a generalist informative will, cannot accommodate the entire volume of information”, he continued. For this reason, “the channel was born to amplify all this work”, providing visibility in Catalonia, Spain and Latin America.
The La Uni platform will offer informative and opinion articles, chronicles, interviews and videos about university life and its community. They will be presented in Catalan and Spanish. The channel has the support of the three universities: the UB, the UAB and the UPC.
Daniel Crespo explained that one of the “major” challenges facing universities, centers par excellence for research and innovation, is communication. “We generate a lot of information and we are very proud of what we do – he added – but we need a structured communication channel to help us get closer to society”. In this sense, he indicated that one can inform himself through social networks, but the veracity of the facts is only confirmed in reference headlines such as La Vanguardia.
A former student from each institution was invited to the presentation, which was conducted by Susana Quadrado, editor-in-chief of the Society. Three women who agree to lead leading areas of technology and who explained their experience in a labor market dominated by men. Anna Navarro Schlegel, who intervened from Silicon Valley, graduated in English and German Philology at the UB, trained in telecommunications and is now Vice President of Product, International Market and Globalization at Procore Technologies. In Silicon Valley, Navarro explained, less than 30% of the workforce are women, but they are in communication, advocacy or secretarial positions. “In the technical teams, which are the ones who develop the innovations, that is to say, which are responsible for defining the technology that we will all consume, 96% are men”. Navarro, who is, according to the magazine Analytics Insight, the most influential woman in the world in the field of technology, confessed that “every day” she encounters difficulties because she is a woman.
Yolanda Lupiáñez, a computer engineer from the UAB, was also surprised by the change experienced by her colleagues when she became a mother and excluded her from various activities. An expert in digital transformation applied in the field of health (she created the IT applications on covid for the Generalitat), she is now the executive director of her own startup, Myllox, made up mostly of women and with special sensitivity towards their needs.
For her part, Elisenda Bou-Balust valued the fact that she was able to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a summer when, at the age of 19, she was studying Telecommunications. He traveled thanks to a scholarship granted by the UPC and at MIT he discovered that “it was one more”. This recognition of UPC training as well as awareness of her own value led her to develop a successful career (she sold a company to Apple and collaborated with NASA). Today she is an expert in artificial intelligence, software architecture and autonomous learning systems and works for Apple in Barcelona.
The UB, the UAB and the UPC host various groups (professors, researchers, students and administrative staff), all linked to the generation, transmission and organization of knowledge. The three combined communities have a total of 155,000 people.
