Xabier Insausti is a professor at department of Biomedical Engineering and Science at Tecnun and has been on a stay in Norway from March to August. Specifically, he has been at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), which is the largest Norwegian university, with about 7,000 employees. Among them are two researchers who have received the award Nobel Prize. It is also the country's leading institution for engineering education. Insausti was at campus in Gjøvik, working on signal processing in interference-limited scenarios. 

"In particular, we have generalized existing results from information theory for proper signals to the case of improper signals," Insausti explains. To do this, he has employee Gray' s theory of Toeplitz matrices and his concept of successions of asymptotically equivalent matrices. "This line of research is the continuation of the joint work that has already been carried out between Tecnun and NTNU, which has resulted in result several recent publications in prestigious journals".

Before going there, Insausti recognizes that he had a very different image of Norway: "Probably because they try to sell us as a country model, to imitate in many aspects. But the pace of work is much slower than here, most of the teachers show up to give their classes and the rest of the time you don't really know where they are," he says. He was also struck by the way they dress: "There it's perfectly normal for a teacher to go to class wearing sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt". 

As for the anecdotes of his stay there, what impressed him most was that when he arrived there was two meters of snow. "For me it was a status where you couldn't do anything, but for the Norwegians it was the norm, as if it were a sirimiri day in Donostia," he concludes.

Mabel Rodríguez, in London

Mabel Rodríguez belongs to the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials of Tecnun and has spent three and a half months in the United Kingdom, at the Institute for Design Innovation of Loughborough University London. 

This was his second stay there. "Last year we started a research project to explore the role that design can play in open innovation practices between startups and large companies. We reviewed the state of the art and designed a questionnaire to conduct interviews with startups in London and Navarra. This year we already had the interviews and we have analyzed the data and written two research articles with the results, the publication process of which we are about to begin", explains Rodriguez, who stresses that being able to carry out research work with an international perspective is always very interesting, "and more highly valued at an academic level".

Mabel has seen similarities in the way of working at Tecnun and the British center where she has done her stay. For example, the high level of involvement of the professors and researchers with her work, "and also the ease with which you can compare your research with more experienced researchers. They are always willing to give you feedback to financial aid to improve your work," says the teacher at Tecnun.

In the section of anecdotes, Mabel Rodriguez recalls this one: "The campus is located in East London, in the Olympic area, and when there is an event at the Olympic Stadium and tickets are not sold out, the University receives a package of gift tickets and offers them by mail to professors and researchers. As I was one of the first to arrive at campus in the morning, this year I was able to attend to a Rolling Stones concert and some athletics championships."