The Machine Tool and Manufacturing Technologies Course began in November last year and is a pioneering practical training initiative put into practice by the University. The course is run in conjunction with the fifth-year specialities of Industrial Engineering and Automatic and Electronic Engineering.

The first group to have completed the Course consists of 17 students, who combined the final year of their engineering degree with five months of theory classes and educational cooperation placements at companies and Basque machine tool sector R+D centres. Many of them are now working at the centres at which the completed their work placements, which gives an idea of the excellent level of labour market integration of this Course. The diploma awarding ceremony was presided by Enrique Amezua, Director of the Bilbao ETSI, and also attended by Koldo Arandia, President of the Spanish Association of Machine Tool Manufacturers (AFM); Izaskun Artetxe, Managing Director of the Bizkaia Regional Government Innovation and Competitiveness Department; Inmaculada Freije, Planning and Strategy Manager of the Basque Government Department of Industry; Pedro Luis Arias, Deputy Regional Minister for Universities and Research of the Executive Education Department; and the University itself was represented by Juan José Unzilla, Vice-Rector of Lecturing Staff of the University of the Basque Country.