I’m sure many of you know the word STEM.
It is a word that lately appears often in the media
and, for those who do not know,
are the abbreviations in English of “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics”,
which are considered essential disciplines
on which a modern society is built,
an advanced society, and that, therefore,
they are also the basis of the most demanded professions.
Surely also in the media
have heard lately
precisely the lack of this type of professionals.
Most of the holders
they echo that there is a lack of qualified personnel,
engineers are missing and, what is more important,
Vocations are lacking
Missing students who really want to do university studies
in these areas.
The problem becomes much more serious if we look at the small number of women
that approach the world of engineering.
Well, all these headlines do nothing but show
a concern of society for its own future,
for the generation of wealth, for the improvement of the quality of life,
because engineering is behind all that.
Engineering is behind the most innovative projects,
is behind the generation of productive fabric,
because innovation and entrepreneurship are, today,
the pillars of growth of our society.
The engineer is presupposed a series of capabilities
that have to do with catching technology,
solve a problem and improve people’s lives.
The truth is that this social perception has changed and now it has
a somewhat pejorative bias.
In fact, when we think of an engineer today,
probably many of us are going to someone who is mostly bored
but also, messy, asocial,
and spend a lot of hours in front of a computer.
It will be a stereotype,
but it is true that this stereotype has come with much more force
through the Anglo-Saxon world.
There the cinema and television are powerful tools
to fix this type of clichés or stereotypes.
And in the United States, if you go and someone talks to you about an engineer,
he quickly tells you:
“Yes, it’s that guy who wears a pocket protector.”
And they will ask, and what is that?
Well, I also asked it until they explained to me that it was this gadget,
that somehow serves to make the pens
do not stain the pocket of the shirt.
Of course, if in addition to this character we put face,
Well, we meet someone like that.
And we should ask ourselves if our society,
with the models that our teenagers follow,
Will our children really want to be engineers?
Let’s not say anything about our daughters.
The truth is that this absolute lack of glamor in the world of engineering
It is partly due to the lack of generosity
who have had the means of communication with our profession.
And to give an example
I would like you to think for a moment about another totally different profession.
Let’s think about a forensic doctor.
A coroner … but, well,
Is there anything less glamorous than a guy who dissects corpses?
However, when we now hear the forensic word,
we all think of a member of the detective team, so attractive,
who participates in this well-known series, who work in cosmopolitan cities,
in neat, clean environments, with designer furniture and that
solve impossible problems with great amount of ingenuity.
It’s probably the furthest thing from what a coroner really does,
but it makes the profession attractive.
Although, what I assure you, is that in all likelihood
We will not see any of the headlines that we have seen at the beginning.
“In 2017, 20,000 forensics will be needed.”
Eliminating, or forgetting a bit, biases,
and focusing more on surveys based on surveys made to our youth
about what profession they want to have or what their desires really are
when it comes to making a professional career
The truth is that girls always stay away from technology.
They do not really want to be sitting in front of a computer for a long time
and tend to choose socio-health profiles.
And it’s a reality, I, in fact, my daughter a few months ago,
when he had to decide what his university studies were going to be
He said something like:
“Dad, it’s that I want to have a profession that helps people.”
Of course, before such a statement, I said:
“Man, I’m an engineer and I think I help people.”
And besides, really, I have never used a pocket protector.
My daughter is doing medicine.
I think it’s time, then,
to claim what the engineering profession really is.
He is a professional who has to be creative,
that you have to think critically, make decisions, make choices,
and in short, take technology and make dreams come true.
And for that I’m going to borrow from a friend,
engineer also from here in Albacete,
that a few weeks ago he was given a prize for his professional career,
defined the engineer precisely like this: as the dream builder.
There are a lot of initiatives
that precisely try to increase the number of vocations
and eliminate that negative bias from engineering studies.
And many of those initiatives come from the university world,
of the world of education.
And it is reasonable, since education has a great responsibility to accompany
and guide society in its processes of change.
And eye, not only training professionals
but also providing them with other types of skills that they will need
to address those changes and address the challenges these changes pose.
However, unfortunately, the university does not often perceive
this problem of the lack of vocations in Engineering as a social problem
but more like something that happens in a timely manner
and that supposes the absence of students in the classrooms.
This means that, with the aim of attracting new students,
So try to eliminate everything that is negative
and that causes rejection, trivializing engineering studies.
And sometimes even banalizing the role of women
in the world of engineering.
I say, in order also to bring women to university studies.
The fact is that I’m going to try to give them some brushstrokes
about my personal experience to see the keys to why
a teenager may not want and can really be an engineer.
This is me as a child, and a few years ago you will see.
What I can assure you is that it is not far from here.
This is Albacete and they are two streets beyond where we are today.
In that environment it was very difficult to think that I was going to want to be an engineer.
In fact, the most recognizable professions around were the guilds,
there were carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, butchers …
There was one that stood out, and that was the man who came home
with a briefcase full of powerful instruments that,
well, that one also related to something that was going wrong
and that was solved.
So, that family doctor who was coming then,
in those times home,
It was what allowed me to think that I could be a perfectly doctor.
I do not really remember that it was because that profession helped people,
but rather, as I said,
to use those powerful instruments that went in that magical briefcase.
The fact is that something crossed my path.
I began to notice that I was dizzy when I saw the slightest drop of blood
and that threw away, obviously, with all my plans.
And it made my vocation for medicine completely disappear.
In my house, however, the power of the radio was also experienced very closely.
Not from the technical point of view, but as a means of communication.
My mother, radio announcer here at a station in Albacete,
I always had a radio on at home,
as probably also happened in many of the houses in the 60s.
The fact is that one of those devices,
this little one, who was the height of technology,
the miniaturization of the radio, in fact his name was Tom Thumb,
It was a gift from his classmates
and it was what helped me to think, well, that there was a possibility to emulate
to one of the greatest engineering geniuses there has been,
Thomas Alva Edison.
Edison was able to pick up any device,
dismantle it, analyze it, understand it, modify it, improve it.
So I picked up my Tom Thumb radio, well my mother’s Tom Thumb radio and I proceeded.
I dismantled it.
And well, do not want to know what happened next.
Neither the consequences.
The fact is that when a few years later
I said I wanted to be a telecommunication engineer,
it is clear that my mother thought of her radio Thumbelina
and what had happened to her.
And I think a lot of love, some condescension
and I hope that also an extraordinary faith in my abilities,
of course in my future abilities,
He prevented me from making any kind of comment.
Engineering studies are complicated, they are difficult,
and the environment that you find is not always the most desirable
and the most motivating.
You really meet very competitive people
and that he also perfectly followed the Edison cycle,
at least they were able to dismantle and assemble a radio. Which I do not.
And there was also a continuous litany in the environment:
“Nothing, do not strain, because total,
You will spend here twice as many years as what is predetermined. “
In that context, really so aggressive, so little motivating,
because the truth is that again the role of education is essential.
And the university world has the key elements to do it:
He has his teachers.
If we want good engineers, we need good teachers.
Teachers that beyond their academic bias,
that is necessary and fundamental, they must be professionals and understand.
Fully understand the problems of society
and be involved in it.
And with that, give the keys so that the capacities of each one,
of their students, come to light and allow them to face the challenges
that those social problems are really offering.
And that’s what happened to me, thankfully, and to many others
that we had good teachers, who motivated us,
that were able to awaken our curiosity,
that also forced us to do practical work,
Complete complete projects and put them into operation.
And that is something that is unparalleled.
In the world of engineering there is a tool that is the fundamental one,
and I also dare to say that the most motivating, and it is technology.
Talk in this case about my technology,
that has to do with telecommunications,
with computer science, because the truth is that it is quite vulgar.
There are a lot of gurus out there,
than making predictions about what technology will allow us to do,
or will prevent us from doing in the near future.
I do not want to speak today in that area, or deal with that area of technology,
but talk more about technology as
a tool at the service of society.
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple,
in one of his interviews he told an anecdote.
In his neighborhood lived an old man and one day in his garage,
Do you know that in the USA? everything happens in the garages,
In his garage he showed him a container, a small can,
with a motorized trailer,
where he put a lot of different stones,
of different types, with different sizes, different edges, gave him a little liquid,
he put it to spin and the next day they could check again
that all the pieces, all the stones, had been polished,
they had rounded off and they were all alike.
Although Steve Jobs told this anecdote in a completely different context,
I would like to think of technology as that liquid,
that magic ointment,
that is able to achieve a more egalitarian and integrating society.
I do not want equal people, but equal opportunities
and that the talents of each one develop in an equal way.
Talking about information technologies and communications
It can be boring
But I do want you to conceive those technologies
like that magic ointment because they have shown it during the last century.
The great social revolutions,
that have to do precisely with the special and essential capacity
of the human being to communicate,
they come hand in hand with these technologies.
The access to the information,
the elimination of barriers in access to information,
although it was communicated in a unidirectional way
through the mass media,
radio and television
Internet managed to democratize it and make it possible for each person
In any moment, in any place,
was at the same time generating or consuming information
and, in addition, globally and in real time.
In this world of intelligent objects,
we all have a phone that they say is smart,
an intelligent watch, we live in smart cities,
we would not really get them to comply
your goal if it is not to build a smart society
where intelligent people coexist.
And an intelligent society
It is the one that is able to integrate and eliminate barriers.
I want to stop in these final minutes
precisely in concrete projects that allow that elimination of barriers,
they really allow them to be knocked down,
and the access of certain groups with special needs,
to something that for the rest of the people is almost obvious or natural.
Those technologies that are called accessible
they are really very powerful
and they are really capable of improving the lives of many.
I’m not going to tell big projects, ambitious projects,
with amazing results, that we all follow on television,
and fortunately, great institutions, universities,
researchers, are embarked on them
and they are the turning point for a better society,
to apply the technology, to achieve it.
We have seen the recent Princess of Asturias Award,
It is an example of this.
However, at the beginning, I spoke of vocations, of young engineers
and that is what I am going to do now.
I’m going to tell you a series of projects that are made by students
of the National University
and by engineers really who saw
the possibilities of very powerful technologies,
such as visual technologies, 3D image generation,
the image recognition, augmented reality,
virtual reality,
they saw in them an unimaginable potential to eliminate barriers,
to offer viable solutions to groups with special needs.
The first project that I want to tell you
it has to do with the removal of a barrier
that the group of people with hearing disabilities
has continuously and is that of basic communication.
We are used to seeing that person in a little window,
in a corner of the television and we say: Ah, this is solved.
But the truth is that in any daily activity
a deaf person needs that little window
and he does not know where he is.
We think that technology could offer good results
and two students embarked on a project that allowed to make a virtual avatar
and translate the written language directly,
or the spoken language, in a virtual avatar that will sign.
They studied the human skeleton.
They were able to make a library of signs that could later come together
and form as a cartoon.
They worked facial expression so important for the group of deaf
to exercise that communication.
We counted on them to really tell us what was and was not acceptable.
And then we translated it.
We change the phrases because the syntax of the sign language
It is completely different from the Spanish language and we put skin on it.
We put the skin that was needed in each context.
The second has to do with motor disability.
People who have mobility problems
and that in these smart buildings
could be given a solution in the hand of augmented reality,
recognizing the building space
and superimposing the information that was needed to follow
a road without barriers, in addition to offering other types of information
which could hardly be accessed if you are not knowing that building.
And finally, I would like to talk about a project that
has been done with an association here in Albacete, Asprona,
which is aimed at helping people with Down syndrome and their families.
In Asprona they told us that some of the work activities
performed by people with Down syndrome
they have to do with document management, document management
or certain procedures that appear on a sheet,
and that problems appear.
Help is needed.
We think that obviously the help could be given by a computer,
but a computer is somewhat intrusive, with a difficult interface
and then what we suggest is a small device,
than with a micro camera and a microprojector,
was able to recognize the role that he was accustomed to using
and project help information on it.
So once the form was placed on the table, the form was recognized,
they identified which parts were right or wrong
and in the free parts, information was projected.
In addition, the interface with the computer system also appeared there,
that were virtual buttons through which
help was accessed, well in the form of video
or in the form of a person doing remote assistance.
Other times it was a voice synthesizer that said, in this case,
“You turn the paper over and there you will see clearly in a projection
where you have to print a silkscreen on a garment. “
Well, with all this, what I have done is to show you the possibility of technology
to solve problems; innovational projects,
but they are projects of people and for people.
And we need those professionals with enthusiasm,
with passion and with a transforming vision of technology and society
that allows to bridge and offer viable solutions
from the world of science and technology to society.
We need those STEM vocations that I spoke at the beginning.
We need, in short, the true builders of dreams.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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