"We are a University that wants to have empathy and aspires to offer projects with social benefit," said the rector of the University of Navarra, Alfonso Sánchez Tabernero, during the official opening ceremony of the 2018-2019 academic year, which took place last Friday in Pamplona.

"At the University of Navarra, empathy first has an internal dimension, which consists of the capacity for understanding between faculties, services, departments and research centers. But external empathy is also crucial," said the president. A good example of this, he said, is IDISNA, the Navarra Institute for Health Research.

"The gestation process has been somewhat tortuous, but after several years of work, an institution that integrates the Navarra Hospital Complex, the University of Navarra Clinic, CIMA, Navarrabiomed and the biomedical areas of the Public University of Navarra and the University of Navarra is about to be accredited".

The result, he added, will be a "powerful" network of research teams with professionals from the public and private spheres, who will obtain more resources for their research work and "who will produce science at the service of the health of all citizens".

As he said in his speech, "institutions that seek to achieve a relevant social impact cannot work in isolation, without the collaboration of many other people and entities. Certainly, we cannot get along with everyone, because some people engage in violent behavior or destructive and antisocial attitudes. But they are not the majority. We always have opportunities to connect, to reach agreements, to share tasks, to undertake collaborative projects".

In addition to being a paradigm of empathy, the Rector referred to IDISNA as an example of the implementation of projects to serve society, one of the main objectives of the academic institution. And along with this initiative, he highlighted the teaching innovation, the postgraduate offerings and the new headquarters of the Science Museum. "Today I can assure you that the pace of launching new projects is not going to slow down. We have a good number of ideas in the analysis phase and others that we will start soon," he stressed.

He also detailed other important events of the 17-18 academic year, such as the inauguration of the Madrid campus, which includes the new Clínica building - with 570 employees and more than 25,000 consultations since its opening - and the Alumni Building, which will be officially inaugurated on October 4. "We are convinced that the new Madrid campus will increase our notoriety and reputation and, therefore, will contribute to the strengthening of the Pamplona campus," he added.

He also highlighted the process of Internacionalization, which continues to grow. According to last year's data, "24% of first-year students come from outside Spain, as do 41% of master's degree students and 30% of doctoral students. These high percentages have enriched the experience of the students, who are preparing to work in a global world".

The rector concluded by thanking all the employees for their work and also the efforts of those who support the University, particularly the graduates and the Association of Friends who, together with other benefactors, contributed last year "22 million euros for research, scholarships and other projects".

The opening ceremony began with a Eucharistic concelebration, presided over by the Archbishop of Pamplona and Bishop of Tudela, Francisco Pérez. The academic ceremony then began with the parade of the procession to the Aula Magna, in which more than 250 PhDs participated, and the subsequent reading of the summary of the report of the last academic year, by the Secretary General, Gonzalo Robles.

Professor Pedro Crespo, from the School of Engineering of San Sebastian, then gave the inaugural lecture "From the Information Bit to the Quantum Bit: A History of Telecommunications". The professor in Signal Theory and Communications highlighted the social influence that Telecommunications and Information technology has had in recent times. "In the last 50 years, social behavior has been influenced by this scientific discipline. That is, by all those theories and systems that enable the transmission of information between people, people and machines or between machines, such as the internet of things".

Pedro Crespo, who developed the first ADSL prototypes in the 80s, gave a brief overview of the history of telecommunications and information technologies by the hand of Claude Shannon, the father of this Theory: "At a time of change in the telecommunications paradigm, Shannon discovered how mathematical algorithms are vital for our information society", said the professor from Tecnun, who is developing his research in this field.