SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, visited the University of La Laguna (ULL) this Friday, where he was received by the rector of the center, Francisco García, and some members of his team, to learn about the bibliographic heritage of the institution and its technological potential.
Thus, he has been able to visit the Old Fund of the University of La Lagunas, with its incunabula and other works of incalculable value and, on the other, the clean room where various prototypes of the ‘spin-off’ participated by the university and called ‘Wooptix’, dedicated to the latest trends in the field of imaging and subnanometric lenses.
The visit began at the Guajara Campus, where the delegation visited the General and Humanities Library and made a special stop at the room with its Old Collection, which consists of 20,000 volumes and is available to only a dozen universities throughout the country.
It is made up of incunabula, manuscripts, personal collections and printed volumes from the 15th to the 19th century.
This collection includes manuscripts, incunabula, which are the first books printed in Europe, from 1452, when the printing press was created by Gutenberg, to 1501.
In addition, other volumes printed from the 16th to the 18th century and a historical collection made up of works from the 19th century belong to the collection. Also part of this collection are personal files of writers or historians that have been donated to the University of La Laguna, generally with manuscripts by the researchers themselves.
There, the person in charge of these facilities, Paz Fernández-Palomeque, showed him some of the most valuable copies that the university campus treasures, such as the ‘Book of Hours’, an illuminated manuscript from 1547, according to a note from the ULL.
The visit also served to value the library not only as a repository of bibliography, but as an authentic resource for developing research, thanks to services such as the newspaper library, the map library and subscriptions to impact scientific journals accessible for staff consultation. investigator.
In response to the area of the visiting minister, the University of La Laguna has also wanted to show the industrial potential of the institution and, therefore, always accompanied by the rector, they went to the Science and Technology Park of Tenerife to access one of the facilities of ‘ Wooptix’, a ‘spin-off’ company that emerged in 2016 from research on imaging technologies developed at the University of La Laguna.
‘Wooptix’ is based in three locations: Tenerife, Madrid and San Francisco. The technology company has eleven families of patents around the applications of its wavefront sensor.
This corporation focuses on the manufacture of tools that allow the manufacture of chips. Specifically, Phemet* performs semiconductor metrology, and its accuracy is a giant leap in that field, which is why the company has prestigious partners such as Tokyo Electron or Intel Capital.
EIC ACCELERATOR
It has the backing of an EIC Accelerator, with a 2.5 million euro grant and investment from the European Union, and has just concluded Round B of Financing, which has closed at 11 million euros with the participation of the EU, CDTI, Tokyo Electron, Intel Capital, Bullnet, Mondragón, Caixa Capital Risk, and Fresnel Technologies.
The company’s executive director, José Manuel Rodríguez Ramos, who is also a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, acted as guide on this visit, which took them to the company’s clean room, to which access it was necessary to wear sterile clothing to prevent any type of contamination enters the enclosure.
The reason is because two prototypes of semiconductor metrology machines with subnanometric precision are housed inside.
This instrumentation is essential for chip quality control and also for reducing the size of future chips, and represents a strategic industrial development area in the high-tech sector.
After the visit, during which he was able to sign the Honor Book of the University of La Laguna, the minister showed his surprise at the important bibliographical treasure that the institution has in its Old Collection and valued very positively the strength of the company Wooptix in fields as competitive as optics and semiconductors.
