The University of Deusto awards the 3rd UD-Banco Santander Research Award

Last 11 December, Rector Jaime Oraá presided over the presentation of the 3rd UD-Banco Santander Research Award, which was granted to two research projects. The first one is based on a software application that will contribute to the rehabilitation of laryngeal cancer patients, and the second focuses on the toponymy of Alava. This prize is awarded by the University of Deusto, in collaboration with Banco Santander, through its Santander Universidades Network. It mainly seeks to acknowledge and promote the efforts made by researchers and research teams at this Basque academic institution, thus fostering the growth and development of new scientific research projects.
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11 December 2007

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The first prize has been awarded to a research project entitled ?Desarrollo de un software para la evaluación objetiva de la calidad de la voz en procesos de diagnóstico, rehabilitación y aprendizaje?. It has been carried out by a team of researchers headed by researcher Begoña García Zapirain. This research work applies biomedical engineering to persons who have had their vocal cords removed due to laryngeal cancer.For these people, who have to learn esophageal speech, the award-winning researchers have developed an innovative software programme, ESOTEK 1, which evaluates these patients? voice quality and level of speech intelligibility by means of objective parameters that are widely accepted by the scientific community.This application is useful both for the laryngectomee, since it helps them in their learning process, and for the medical team that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and supervision of these patients.

The research work entitled Elaboración de la toponimia para la cartografía 1:5000 de Álava' , supervised by Nerea Mujika Ulazia, and carried out by an interdisciplinary team of over 30 people,was awarded second prize.With her research work, which is centred around three main areas ? history, language and territory, the toponymic corpus of Alava has been enriched with a database of over half a million entries.To achieve this, researchers carried out a thorough analysis of a large amount of documents, painstaking fieldwork andcareful workfor geographical and linguistic normalisation.

The UD-Banco Santander Research Award is part of the collaboration between the University of Deusto and Banco Santander since 2004, and through which this financial institution collaborates in the development of different projects run by this Basque academic institution. These include the activities carried out by the Chair in Leisure and Knowledge and the UNESCO Chair for Human Resource Training in Latin America, which promotes the creation of PhD programmes in collaboration with different American universities.This bank sponsors the new University Library of the University of Deusto, designed by architect Rafael Moneo, which will open its doors to the university community in 2008, and will be a resource centre for learning and research within the European Higher Education Area.

This bank collaborates in these and other initiatives promoted by the University of Deusto through its Santander Universidades Network (División Global Santander Universidades). Its activities focus on the social action undertaken by this financial institution, thus promoting a permanent alliance with the university world in Spain, Portugal, America and the United Kingdom.Between 1996 and 2006, Banco Santander allocated a total of 400 million euros to the sponsorship of academic research and technological projects.

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