EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CANDIDATE

Biography

Luis Manuel Sánchez Ruiz is SEFI Former Vice President (2015-20). He has been employed by Technical University of Valencia (UPV, Spain), since 1980 where he became Full Professor in 2000. He had been a Visiting Professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA on several occasions during 1992-99. He has worked with Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering students. Since 2005, his lecturing addresses to Aerospace Engineering.

He has published over 10 textbooks for Engineering students and over 150 papers in papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. His research interests include Engineering Education as well as Functional Analysis and its applications. His supervised dissertations in these fields show the spectrum and transition STEM -> STEAM and comprise: “Study of some barrelledness conditions in locally convex spaces (2002)”, “Analysis, proposal and development of some objective measure in 123/-mIBG scientigraphies for neuroblastoma patients (2015)”, “Computational assessing model based on performance and dynamic assignment of curriculum contents (2016)”, and “STEM subjects face the Haptic Generation: the iScholar (2020)”.

He has full language competence in English and Spanish, can communicate in Italian and French, and can follow Portuguese.

Former IFEES Executive Member during 2017-19, Member of the Board of Directors (Administrative Council) of SEFI since 2012, Director of the UPV Programs Office with USA/Canada and Asia/Pacific, Academic Co-ordinator of Mediterranean University of Science and Technology, Vice Dean and Head of International Relations at ETSID (UPV).

Responsible for several research projects granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education. He has been Academic Coordinator of several transnational programmes at UPV such as the financed by the European Commission Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Programme IDEAS, Innovation and Design for Euro- Asian Scholars involving universities from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bhutan and Nepal, or a triple degree programme between UPV, University of Parma and New Jersey Institute of Technology NJIT. He has been working for IEE Frontiers in Education Conference Program Committees. He has recently been involved in several EACEA projects such as ACADEMICA meant to harmonise and update Higher Education in Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), and THINKING SMART related to Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization (RIS3).

He has participated in several international events hosted by ASEE, Zhejiang University and Education Committee of Chinese Academy of Engineering, CAST, FEAIP, ICEE at Tsinghua University, World Engineering Education Forums (WEEF), ASEF events such as Asia-Europe Education Workshops, ECED European Convention for Engineering Deans being co-Chair of the one organized in Valencia 2015.

He is currently member of the Board of Directors of SEFI, the European Association for Engineering Education, UPV Director Research and Innovation Programs Area, member of the Editorial Board of Scientiae Mathematicae Japonicae, Consultant Professor at NPU (Xi’an, China) and Coordinator of GRIM4E, GRoup of Innovative Methodologies and assessment For Engineering education at UPV.

Rationale

Under suggestion of the SEFI President, Yolande Berbers, and the SEFI Board of Directors endorsement, I am addressing to you in order to present my candidacy to serve for a two-year mandate in the IFEES Executive Committee where I had the honour to serve in the past.

Peace Engineering has been a timely and relevant issue brought into stage by IFEES and digitalization has speeded up as relevant issue as well that add more facets to be had into account in engineering education which cares to provide qualified professionals that are required for the well-being of people and societies.

There being different engineering education societies with different scopes and environments, the importance of a society as IFEES is clear to gather them and facilitate their cooperation in search of high quality programs and the acquisition of key competences by the future professionals throughout institutions participating in the corresponding engineering societies. One of such key competences where IFEES is playing a relevant role is the ability of understanding the different environments and cultures where the increasingly interdependent engineering problems and solutions have to be understood and applied.

During 2017-19, I participated in the most relevant IFEES events including personal attendance to Kualu Lumpur, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Tampa’s President’s roundtable, all of them IFEES events/sessions. In the last one I brought up two of the five topics under discussion, namely on “Challenges in University-Business Cooperation in Engineering Education: Crossing Borders” and “Continuous Assessment, Basic to Student Center Learning University Challenges with Digital Natives”.

Throughout my background, with over 30 years involved in international relations all over the world, interest in Engineering Education, active role within SEFI in its Administrative Council/Board of Directors and SEFI Vice President, I am ready to continue offering IFEES my experience and strong dedication in contributing to IFEES visibility and pursue of its vision, mission, objectives and values as described in its IFEES Strategic Plan which I fully subscribe.

I look forward to newly having the opportunity to serve IFEES on its Executive Committee and raise relevance of engineering education worldwide.