Just a few weeks ago, CINTECX’s researcher Belén Riveiro received in Santiago de Compostela one of the awards of the first edition of the Real Academia Galega de Ciencias-Universidad Intercontinental de la Empresa Awards for young researchers and this week she traveled to Madrid to collect the award that this institution annually grants to the best young researchers at the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She received the award at a ceremony held on Tuesday evening at the headquarters of the academy from its president, Jaime Domínguez Abascal.
“For me it is an honor to receive such a prestigious award at a national level and awarded by scientists as renowned as the academics of the Royal Academy of Engineering”, explains the professor, to which she adds that she feels that this award “compensates for the efforts and sacrifices made over the last few years, not only by me, but also by my colleagues in the Applied Geotechnologies group; therefore, this award is shared with them”.
Along the same lines, she also thanked the RAI for presenting awards “which represent recognition and encouragement for engineers in our country to contribute to excellent science”, “we scientists love this profession”, emphasized the researcher, who also had words of gratitude for the directors of her research group, Pedro Arias and Henrique Lorenzo, “my laboratory colleagues, the doctoral students who over the years have contributed to generating knowledge in our group, as well as the different entities that welcomed me throughout my postdoctoral training and all my collaborators”. She also, with emotion, thanked her family, her parents, husband, children and in-laws, “who are the ones who truly make it possible to reconcile family and science”.
Scientific contributions with high impact on transfer
Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering, Applied Mechanics and Construction and researcher in the Applied Geotechnologies group of Cintecx, Research Center in Technologies, Energy and Industrial Processes of the University of Vigo, Riveiro received the Agustín de Betancourt y Molina Award for her contribution in the field of health monitoring of civil engineering structures that have given rise to relevant scientific contributions and also to an important technology transfer through large-scale contracts with companies, and seven patents, three of them licensed.
“The main milestones of my scientific career are related to the resilience of infrastructures, in particular with land transport infrastructures”, explained the researcher in her speech, highlighting the “essential” nature of this research to contribute to achieving sustainable development. “It is being demonstrated that the effects of climate change are accelerating these processes of degradation of infrastructures. Extreme events are becoming more and more frequent, as we have recently seen in our country, which considerably increases the risks of a natural nature”, remarked Riveiro.
The Royal Academy of Engineering Awards Committee also valued the fact that this important work carried out by Riveiro has already been recognized with important distinctions, including the Matilde Ucelay National Youth Research Award, in its 2022 edition, awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, or the Juan López de Peñalver Medal awarded by the RAI in 2017 “for his contributions to the application of geomantic techniques to the structural dimensional monitoring of civil engineering and construction structures, as well as the application of 3D modeling in smart cities”.
By the unanimous vote of the committee
The decision to grant him this award was adopted unanimously by all the academics who participated in the RAI Awards Committee meeting, held last October
At the same event, the Juan López de Peñalver Award was also presented, which also recognizes the best young researchers, ‘ex aequo’ to Rubén Tolosa, from the Escola Politécnica Superior of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Natalia Díaz, from the Escola Técnica Superior de Informatica y de Telecommunications Engineering of the Universidad de Granada. Likewise, the engineers Sergi Abadal Caballé, Raquel Lebrero Fernández and Mª Mirian Velay Lizancos were awarded second place medals for the Agustín de Betancourt Award for their research work.
Link to the video of the solemn ceremony of the Young Researchers and Academiae Dilecta 2024 awards (intervention by Belén Riveiro from minute 15.20 approx.).