Majid Latifi

Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC):

Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Catalan: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC), currently referred to as BarcelonaTECH and commonly named just as UPC, is the largest engineering university in Catalonia, Spain - albeit encompassing other disciplines such as mathematics and architecture.

UPC's objectives are based on internationalization, as it is Spain's technical university with the highest number of international PhD students and Spain's university with the highest number of international master's degree students. UPC is a university aiming at achieving the highest degree of engineering/technical excellence and has bilateral agreements with several top-ranked European universities.

UPC is a member of the Top Industrial Managers for Europe network, which allows for student exchanges between leading European engineering schools. It is also a member of several university federations, including the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER) and UNITECH.[4]

The university was founded in March 1971 as the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona through the merger of engineering and architecture schools originally founded during the 19th century. As of 2007 it has 25 schools in Catalonia located in the cities of Barcelona, Castelldefels, Manresa, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Terrassa, Igualada, Vilanova i la Geltrú and Mataró. UPC has about 30,000 students and 2,500 professors and researchers.

Barcelona:

Barcelona is the capital city of the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain and the country's second largest city, with a population of 1.6 million within its administrative limits. Its urban area extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of around 4.5 million people, being the sixth-most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, London, Madrid, the Ruhr area and Milan. About five million people live in the Barcelona metropolitan area. It is the largest metropolis on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, and bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range, the tallest peak of which is 512 metres (1,680 ft) high.

Barcelona is located on the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea, on a plain approximately 5 km wide limited by the mountain range of Collserola, the Llobregat river to the southwest and the Besòs river to the north. This plain covers an area of 170 km2 (66 sq mi), of which 101 km2 are occupied by the city itself. It is 120 kilometres south of the Pyrenees and the Catalan border with France.