Marta Ormazábal and Francisco Planes PHOTO: Communication Service

The Rector has appointed Francisco Javier Planes as Deputy Director of Research, to continue the work left by our beloved José María Sarriegi, who sadly passed away last December.

Francisco Javier Planes holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the University and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brunel University (UK). Since 2008, he has been a lecturer at the University, combining teaching in Industrial Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Since 2014 he has been a Senior Lecturer in Statistics and Operations Research and since 2015, to date, he has held the position of Deputy Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Science. He is a researcher in the Bioinformatics group of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. His research has focused on the development of new algorithms for the interpretation and analysis of high-resolution molecular technologies ("omics" data), with applications mainly in cancer. He has participated in 15 research contracts/projects at national and European level. Since 2013, he has been leading projects in the area of metabolism and cancer, including the one recently awarded by the Ramón Areces Foundation. He is the author of 35 scientific articles in high impact journals such as Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, Genome Biology or Bioinformatics. In addition, he has supervised and co-directed 6 doctoral theses and is currently supervising 5 doctoral theses.

The Rector has also appointed Marta Ormazábal as Deputy Director of Tecnun. Marta will focus mainly on Academic Organisation matters.

Marta Ormazábal holds a PhD in Applied Engineering from the University. She is a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Organisation at Tecnun where she teaches Business Administration; Economics and Business; and Business Administration and Telecommunication Projects. She was coordinator of the first year of Engineering and since 2014 she has been in charge of Academic Coordination and Authorisation for international study programmes. She is also coordinator of the "International Industrial Management Program".

She has been working in the field of sustainability for more than nine years and her research area focuses on the implementation of circular economy in industrial companies, where she is actively involved in different projects. She has published more than 25 scientific articles, 12 of them in the first quartile of the Journal Citation Reports. She is also a reviewer of articles in high impact journals related to sustainability and has developed part of her research at the University of Leeds (England) and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal).

With these two appointments, the board of directors of the School of Engineers is composed of the director, Raúl Antón; four deputy directors, Paloma Grau, Jorge Juan Gil Nobajas, Francisco Planes, Marta Ormazábal; the director of development, Iñigo Gutiérrez and the manager, Javier Aizpún.