A Coruña, June 20, 2018.- The University of A Coruña has two new international researchers of excellence thanks to the InTalent talent acquisition program, which the University of A Coruña promotes with funding from Inditex.
Ana Rey Rico, from the Biomedicine area, and Jorge Ledo, from the Humanities area, are joining the A Coruña research team with this program that will allow them to develop their research project over the next few years. This morning, the Rector’s Office hosted the presentation ceremony for the new InTalent researchers, in which Jorge Ledo thanked the UDC and the company Inditex “for the opportunity to return to Spain after ten years abroad.” Jorge Ledo, who holds a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of A Coruña, completed his training at universities in Barcelona, Madrid and the United Kingdom and was a lecturer at the universities of Michigan, United States, and Basel, Switzerland; therefore, “returning to the UDC is returning home,” he declared. Ledo added that this program will also allow him to guide UDC students in their training abroad, as well as attract research and intellectual talent from outside the University itself.
Ana Rey reiterated her gratitude to the InTalent program because “it is an exceptional opportunity to start my research career in Spain”. Ana Rey has a degree in Biology from the University of Santiago de Compostela and a doctorate in Pharmacy from the same university. After completing her doctorate, she continued as a postdoctoral researcher in gene therapy at the Center for Experimental Orthopedics in Homburg/Saarland, Germany.
For his part, the Rector of the University of A Coruña, Julio Abalde, expressed his satisfaction that this program facilitates the return to Galicia of two excellent researchers. InTalent will allow them to develop “their brilliant research career within the University of A Coruña” and recalled that with these additions the scientific and teaching strategy of the UDC is reinforced since it will also allow them to join the teaching staff at the end of their contract as researchers. “One of the biggest problems of the Spanish university is the aging of its workforce and the difficulty of retaining and attracting talent”, he recalled.
Finally, the vice-chancellor for Scientific Policy, Research and Transfer, Salvador Naya, explained that Ana Rey and Jorge Ledo are the additions to the second call for applications for the InTalent program, in which 64 applications were submitted from all over the world. “It is a very competitive program, with brilliant resumes and the difficult thing is to choose just two,” he said.
InTalent is a program to attract and retain research excellence in Galicia. Created by the University of A Coruña in 2016, it has funding from Inditex for a total amount of 1,450,000 euros to hire six researchers, who will join two at a time in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The contract will last two years, with the possibility of an extension of one more year. The amount of each contract will be 45,000 euros per year, plus a grant of 10,000 euros for the costs of starting up their scientific project. In addition, the University will pay 1,000 euros for travel expenses.
Posted by:
UDC communication office