Former students Belen Martín and Coro Celigüeta, Excellence Scholarship Holders by the Rafael del Pino Foundation

Coro Celigüeta will do the second year of the Master in Business Administration at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Belén Martín will do a PhD in the field of Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech.

CoroCeligüeta and Belén Martín, former students of Tecnun, have received the scholarship Excellence Award from the Rafael del Pino Foundation , which will allow them to continue their education at two of the most prestigious universities in the world: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). The engineers had to go through a complicated selection process in which only 3% of the applicants are chosen. More than 400 candidates applied statewide, of which 30 made it to the final interview and 12 were awarded scholarships.

Among the multiple requirements was to be admitted to a top university in the world, in addition to having to submit several letters from reference letter, explain what project they wanted to do with scholarship and demonstrate their leadership and altruism. "I took the opportunity to tell my experiences of volunteer activities at Tecnun and I was helped a lot by Professor Pedro Crespo with his letter of reference", thanks Belen Martin. Coro Celigüeta is also grateful for the support of professors Raúl Antón and José María Bastero and affirms that the University of Navarra has contributed to her professional career. "The activities of volunteer activities as Aspace, my participation in the team of Tecnun Motorsport and Bringing Change, or having been a master's delegate has helped me for sure to receive this scholarship".

Thanks to the Coro Celigüeta Foundation, she will do the second year of the Master in Business Administration at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Belén Martín will do a PhD in the field of Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech.

Martín studied Telecommunication Systems Engineeringand the Master's Degree in Telecommunication Engineering at Tecnun. Degree Celigüeta graduated from Mechanical Engineering with a double degree in Industrial Technologies Engineering and a Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering .

A phone call that changed their lives

"I knew about the great work that the Foundation does through the testimony of previous Scholars of Excellence. When they called me and told me that I had been awarded the grant, it changed my life," she says excitedly. "My mother's phone number was contact so she was the one who told me that they were trying to contact me to talk about the scholarship. So I called them immediately, full of expectation...", recalls Martín from the other side of the pond with a smile on her face.

The last two years the scholarship Fulbright has supported him financially and now he was looking for new ways of funding with which to achieve his dream of leading his own laboratory in machine teaching by making learning algorithms more robust, efficient and applicable: "I am looking for mathematical guarantees, making it possible to implement artificial intelligence in situations where a wrong decision is a high risk, for example, by not detecting a brain tumor in its early stage," says Martín. The research field of his thesis has enormous potential in a multitude of areas such as medical imaging diagnostics.  

One thing he is excited about at scholarship is that it will allow him to focus on his research and take advantage of other activities outside of academia. "Currently, I am a member of the committee executive of Clarkston Futures, a volunteer group that provides school support to refugee high school students in Atlanta. In addition, I seek to promote equality in STEM as the graduate leader in Georgia Tech's Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering club, and I have also taken up rock climbing," Martin recounts.

For her part, Coro Celigüeta says that after finishing her studies at Tecnun and working for five years at Amazon, she wanted to train in business administration and management, innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and sustainability. "It is a privilege to study at MIT. I am with professors of great level and surrounded by exceptional and talented classmates," she expresses. "I organized with five other classmates the lecture MBA Spain 2022. I am co-president of the MIT Technology Club and one of the leaders of the Alumni Community in the MIT Senate. I'm making the most of the experience," she says. In the summer, she will also do an internship at Microsoft in Seattle, in the team that manages the worldwide data centers.  

"With my experience in technology companies and the MBA at MIT," he continues, "I would like to pursue a career in the technology world and reach a long-term management position deadline. A technological revolution happens every ten years or so. We are now experiencing the Artificial Intelligence revolution and seeing how companies are adapting to this new paradigm. I believe there is a need for well-trained and resilient leaders capable of adapting organizations in the future in the face of new changes" .