Chairs of Excellence - Introduction

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has distinguished itself by making international activity an invaluable part of its pursuit of excellence in teaching and research. One of the University’s main priorities has always been the attraction of talent in order to consolidate the type of university that the university community wants and that society demands. This facet can be clearly seen in the 2016-2022 Strategic Plan and in the Campus of Excellence seal which the University was awarded in its first edition. And, in order to carry out these goals of internationalization and recruitment of talent, the University has always been able to count on the invaluable support of Banco Santander.

In 2007 the two institutions signed an agreement creating the UC3M-Santander Chairs of Excellence Program. The goal of this program is to promote excellence in research by attracting leading international researchers to the University to help our departments, research institutes and research groups to strengthen and increase their international ties, as well as to improve their technical and scientific skills, develop long-term collaborations and share teaching and research experiences with these renowned researchers.

To date there have been twelve public calls, each with a budget between 950,000 and 1,200,000 euro, co-financed by both institutions. This has allowed 10 to 20 researchers of international prestige to spend periods of six months or one year, endowed with 60,000 or 120,000 euro depending on the length of their stay.

In these twelve calls, 199 Chairs of Excellence have been awarded in areas related to the University’s research activities. The researchers selected come from universities, scientific institutes and research organizations which include, among others: MIT, London School of Economics, Instituto Max Plank, and the Universities of Chicago, California, Cambridge, Boston, Minnesota, Oxford, París or Stanford.

The contributions made by all of these Chair holders has been extremely important; from their role as researchers, to their work, academic merits, teaching and research which has led to successful joint projects, student exchanges, publications, and so on. The aim of this book is to provide an opportunity to present these professors and their work during their stay here at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

On October 11th, 2019 was opened the XIII CALL FOR APPLICATIONS UC3M-Santander Chairs of Excellence, for academic year 2020/2021, offering 8 grants and 2 reciprocal grants, that will be associated with a visit to the holder's home institution by Doctors of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, during the same period of time.