Three Ph.D. students awarded at the III edition of Tecnun Student Research Conference

Three doctoral students from Tecnun were awarded prizes at the III edition of the Tecnun Student Research Conference. The lecture, aimed at participants of the doctoral program at Applied Engineering of Tecnun, has as goal promote the knowledge dissemination scientific among doctoral students, thesis directors and researchers of Tecnun. This edition started with the session "Communicating your Science: Either you become visible or you disappear", at position by Ignacio López Goñi, Full Professor in Microbiology at the University of Navarra. Afterwards, the PhD students presented 62 papers: 20 oral presentations and 42 posters. The workshop culminated with a competition aimed at students who had presented their work in the latter format.

The winners of this edition, Imanol Bravo, Yineska Becerra and Domenico Giannetto, were the most voted doctoral students among colleagues and other professionals who came to see the projects displayed on the posters located in the Igara building of the School.

The coordinator of congress and Full Professor in Engineering, Alejandro Rivas, highlights the students' learning: "Those who have just started face their first exhibition in public and, in addition, it serves them as training for when they have to do it, for example, in an international congress ". For their part, the more senior students made oral presentations to professionals from another area of knowledge and, as Rivas explains, the challenge consists of making an informative exhibition . "We have the feeling that this lecture is taking root among the participants because they see that it is interesting for their professional development ". He also describes López Goñi's session as "inspiring" and says that he encouraged them to organize a workshop using techniques and tools in the scientific knowledge dissemination .

Three projects with social impact

Over time, rail, metro and streetcar tracks degrade, affecting both the geometry of the track and the rail's own attachment to the sleeper. The research of the student PhD student and researcher of Ceit, Imanol Bravo, was recognized by a project that aims to replace patrols and periodic manual inspections with more frequent, automated and standardized inspections, with the goal to increase availability, reliability and safety. To this end, Bravo says that sensors are going to be installed on passenger trains, in the framework of the European project FA3-IAM4RAIL in which Ceit is immersed. "These sensors measure the acceleration forces when the train passes over an area of the track that has a defect, in the same way that we notice a bump in the road due to the sudden movement of the car as it passes over it".

student goal D. student Domenico Giannetto is working on the inclusion of porous Structures in the design of hip prostheses, with the aim of giving them a behavior similar to that of natural bone, both mechanically and biologically. As he explains, "to create these Structures we use a metal additive manufacturing technique called Laser Powder Bed Fusion". The first part of his research is focused on examining how the process parameters involved in fabrication affect the dimensions, surface quality and internal porosity of the parts produced.

Yineska Becerra 's research focuses on the use of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies for the manufacture of inserts for plastic injection molds. In recent decades, the transition from subtractive to additive manufacturing has revolutionized several sectors of Economics. Costs and manufacturing times have been reduced, and this has also affected the molding industry. As the PhD student explains, in the first part of the research, a systematic review was conducted and the most relevant AM technologies for manufacturing these inserts were identified. "Currently, my work is focused on determining their viability through a mechanical and thermal characterization of the materials used in each technology, as well as their influence on the performance of the insert during the injection molding process," details the young researcher at Tecnun.