Promoting the development of clusters in Castilla-La Mancha, that is, associations of companies in the same industry and located in the same territory, with other research centres and different administrations participating, so as to make innovative initiatives, of strategic interest and with international potential. This is what the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) is aiming for in participating in the Cluster FY project, developed within the area of the Interreg Europe programme, and which includes seven regional European agents. The partners of the initiative have gathered together this morning in Ciudad Real to participate in a seminar inaugurated by the managing director of Research, Development and Innovation for the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Teresa Riesgo Alcaide. Responding to questions from the press, Riesgo Alcaide stated that developing innovative policies is one of the priorities of the Government of Spain in general and, in particular, of the Ministry of Science, concurring that universities and research centres should take a leading role in these activities. In explicit reference to the University of Castilla-La Mancha, she said this institution "plays a very important role" in research, development and innovation matters. "The UCLM has proved it is a university with great potential, with a very high research and innovation capacity, even though it has the added difficulty of being located in such a large and spread out region", the managing director stressed, who explained that she knows the University of Castilla-La Mancha well because she had the chance to work with its researchers and professors whilst she was head of Electronic Technology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Moreover, the coordinator of the project in Castilla-La Mancha, the UCLM professor Juan Carlos López, has justified the advantages of initiatives such as Cluster FY with the excellent results that have been obtained by the over eight hundred clusters running at present in Europe, and in the need the potential partners have to know not just how to create them, but also how to run their activities. According to professor López, "the clusters are in a sense territorial and the participants in the Cluster FY project are mainly agencies or regional governments, for maintaining that concept of territory where companies, universities and the governments in the regions are located. The idea- he added- is if all the participants work together, it will be better for us than if we worked separately. This is what we are trying to do in Castilla-La Mancha, where the concept of cluster is especially useful for nurturing the challenge innovation poses in small and medium-sized companies, which in our territory are in a majority".

Together with the UCLM, representing Castilla-La Mancha, the Cluster FY project is made up of the Lithuania Science, Innovation and Technology Agency, the United Northern Provinces of the Netherlands (Holland), the region of Hudiksvall (Sweden), the Polish agency for Corporate Development, the Agency for Rural Development of Sud-Muntenia (Romania), the Slovakian Agency of Innovation and Energy (Slovenia) and the Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas (Greece).

The representatives of all these institutions have been in Castilla-La Mancha for three days completing a programme which began last Monday in Toledo with a work session on the progress made on the project and the results of the topical groups. Yesterday, Tuesday, the group moved to Puertollano and to Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real) to visit the National Centre of Hydrogen, the Bio-refinery for Research and Development (CLAMBER), the Institute for Photovoltaic Concentration Systems (ISFOC), the technological company TECNOBIT and the Technological Metal Centre in Castilla-La Mancha (ITECAM).

UCLM Communication Office Ciudad Real, 24th of October, 2018.