MUBIL and Tecnun sign an agreement to start up the "City Science Lab Gipuzkoa".

Tecnunthe School of Engineering of the University of Navarra, and MUBIL Fundazioa, a center for intelligent and sustainable mobility, have signed an agreement to start up the "City Science Lab Gipuzkoa", an innovation laboratory focused on mobility improvement projects. This new laboratory, which will be located at the headquarters of MUBIL and Tecnun, is the result of an agreement signed by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, MUBIL and the City Science group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Boston at the beginning of March, and has a budget of 1.2 million euros for the next three years.

The general manager of MUBIL and of the new laboratory, Ane Insausti, pointed out that MUBIL's goal is for the territory to be a relevant player in the field of smart and sustainable mobility at an international level. "The City Science Lab is a good example of the work we have been doing, and networking and mutual learning opens up a huge horizon of possibilities. In addition, Tecnun is the first agent that joins to launch the lab and we are sure that other agents will join in the future," he said.

For his part, the director of Tecnun, Raúl Antón, highlighted the "pride" of inaugurating a pioneering innovation laboratory in the territory and that will be open to companies in the sector, which will create new synergies and promote the exchange of knowledge. "Engineering professors and students will work on projects that aim to respond to the challenges of smart mobility in Gipuzkoa, and all this hand in hand with MUBIL and MIT," said Antón.

Likewise, the director of Tecnun, has expressed that this laboratory is the "final step" to the entry of Gipuzkoa in the exclusive collaborative network of cities around the world, sponsored by MIT, which includes Shanghai, Helsinki, Toronto, Taipei, Hamburg, Guadalajara (Mexico), Andorra, Ho Chi Minh City and Concepción (Chile). In the same sense, Ane Insausti emphasized the "benefits" of collaborating with the cities that are already part of the network and learning from their experiences.

The international network 'City Science Network', proposes a unique working methodology, based on research laboratories of reference cities around the world to respond to the challenges of citizenship and to contribute to the advancement towards a new model of city or region.

Within the framework of the initiative, these cities, integrated in an international network of cooperative laboratories, work together with the MIT Media Lab in the development of research leading to the development of key concepts and technologies that are implemented and evaluated in real environments, with experimentation at the core. In the case of Gipuzkoa, these research works and innovative projects will focus on the field of mobility.