Professor Roberto Zanino is the new President of the Magalhães University network

After two years, since the last time, the General Assembly of the Magalhães University network met in person last week - at theTecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico): the international academic network has been promoting the exchange of knowledge and cooperation between European, Latin American and Caribbean university institutions for engineering, architecture and technology since 2005. Consisting of 20 top European universities – including the Politecnico – and 18 Latin American universities, the network unanimously decided to elect Professor Roberto Zanino, lecturer at the Energy Department “Galileo Ferrari” - DENERG of the Politecnico and former vice-president of the network, as its new president for the 2023 – 2024 mandate.

“The Magalhães network has a great potential, which is partly unexploited, given the excellent quality of its members,” says Professor Roberto Zanino. “While traditionally the network has focused on education, in the next two years we intend to explore the possibility of extending the scope of the network’s activities to research and innovation, to a more structured and systematic action on PhDs, and to the development of a collaboration with the Chambers of Commerce in Latin America.  Together with the definition of a new network strategy towards European university communities, our efforts could lead the Magalhães network to become one of the most recognised stakeholders by the main European institutions in the definition of new policies on higher education in Latin America.”

In addition to the new objectives, new strategies and the appointment of the network’s new president, the General Assembly also had all the organisation’s top management go through new elections, electing Professor Luis Vargas from the Universidad de Chile as the new vice-president and Professors Lope Barrero – from the School of Engineering at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá (Colombia) – and Mirko Varano from the Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (Sweden) as new members of the Steering Committee, completing the composition of the body together with Professors Jose Manuel Paez – from the Tecnológico de Monterrey – and Paul Shepherd from the University of Bath.

The Magalhães Network offers added value to the international academic landscape by providing effective tools for collaboration between students from different geographical and cultural backgrounds on the one hand, and promoting the construction and implementation of joint projects between member universities on the other, with the constant aim of widening its scope of action day after day.