Transfiere brings science and business together in Malaga

Cristina Vallejo

Friday, 14 March 2025, 09:21

Transfiere, Europe’s largest trade fair for research, development, innovation and knowledge transfer, is taking place this week at the Malaga conference centre. The first-time visitor may well be overwhelmed by the enormous offer of simultaneous talks, demonstrations of scientific advances applied to everyday life and stands with the typical merchandising pens and notebooks... And there are a lot of people talking about things that seem to be of the utmost importance. Conversations are buzzing.

But for the newcomer to Transfiere there is one thing that stands out above all the rest: rows of tables and chairs that at first glance look like a setting for speed dating. Business, of course. Although who knows what might end up happening there. The organisers of this space explained to SUR that these tables are reserved for half an hour for networking.

At one of these tables is Ana Ramírez from a government agency, who is talking to Vikesh Chugani from Atrineo AG, a company that assesses the commercial potential of emerging technologies and develops technology transfer strategies. They are discussing a public-private partnership project about which they don’t want to reveal much more, except that this is already their second meeting.

José Manuel López and Bernardino García, both from the knowledge transfer office of the University of Tarragona, are sitting down to learn about Abderrahmane Guermat’s project, Diagnoscan, a start-up that applies artificial intelligence to medicine. “This is a good place to initiate collaboration processes, to make ourselves known, for initial contacts”, they say. Emilio José Suárez, who is from Jaén and a lecturer at the University of Zaragoza, for his part, wants to learn from the Galician Daniel García and his project, EnergHius, which uses chips to manufacture energy, because he also wants to be an entrepreneur.

There are many people who, from academia, from pure science, are moving towards entrepreneurship. This is the case of Javier García, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Alicante and winner of the National Research Award 2023: in 2009 he founded Rive Technology, a company that helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which he later sold to W.R. Grace. In his presentation, he echoed the threat to knowledge and science posed by "cutbacks, political pressure and the denial of evidence", and also referred to the protests by scientists in the United States against the measures of the new Trump Administration and the breakdown of collaboration between the US and Europe: "The withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Agreement puts us all in danger," he warned. "Science is the best defence against tariff wars," he said.

All the other political representatives who took part in the inaugural session of Transfiere congratulated García on his words and agreed with them. To the point that the mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre, described some of the United States' actions as "disconcerting", although he expressed his confidence that it would "correct course" due to its "capacity for self-orientation".

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Transfiere has thus become a bastion in the defence of knowledge and scientific evidence. A necessary 'partner' of the company if it wants to grow in productivity and competitiveness. This is how Iván Arriola, from Tekniker, a Basque company that develops new technologies that are applied in industry, put it: "Transfiere serves to make contacts, to create ecosystems, to encourage scientific and technical advances to reach the company. There has to be communication between those who make technology and companies because right now there is a lot of investment in science, but it does not have such an impact on GDP and we need to increase it". His company, Arriola says, talks a lot to companies to find out how to improve their processes and, for example, they are doing so by manufacturing robots that participate in assembly lines in collaboration and communication with humans.

It is very surprising to hear how a robot can be taught to interpret the gestures and words emitted by a person with whom it will be a co-worker. But it is even more surprising to see the demonstrations at the Trade Fair Centre in Malaga. Javier Munilla, from Ciemat (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas) explains how the superconducting coil works, which is part of the Poseidon Project and which helps to charge, store and supply energy to large ships that spend many months at sea. And Manu, Pedro, Mariano and Pablo, four students from the innovative programming school 42, which has neither books nor teachers, showed the president of the provincial council, Francisco Salado, their project: artificial intelligence applied to the measurement of data provided by plants so that, for the first time, humans can communicate with them.

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All this shows that Transfiere brings together in Malaga private and public entities from all over Spain - 16 of the 17 autonomous communities are taking part - and from several countries around the world. In total, as Felipe Romera, president of the fair's organising committee and general director of the Technology Park, explained, this year more than 600 entities and more than 400 experts are coming together to talk about artificial intelligence, the energy transition, the role of European funds in transforming the economy, intellectual property and the challenges of digitalisation. Eighty universities are also present. Francisco Oliva, member of the Standing Committee of the Conference of Rectors and Rector of the Pablo de Olavide University, explained the key role of these higher education centres: "80% of the country's scientific production is carried out by universities; but we need to reach more and better the business world".

The rector of the University of Malaga, Teodomiro López, summed up the event in his speech at the opening on Wednesday: “The spirit of Transfiere is that academia comes into contact with business, with innovation.” Or, as the president of the provincial council, Francisco Salado, added: “An important ingredient of this meeting is the generation of synergies between science and the market.”

The Regional Minister for University, Research and Innovation, José Carlos Gómez Villamandos, stressed that Andalucía has designed a transversal policy for knowledge-based entrepreneurship in order to develop technology-based companies and to structure the territory: "Innovation cannot be focused on a single point, but must be spread throughout Andalucía, so that people can stay where they have been trained, or where scientists can return after having carried out their research stays abroad. We have to be seen as a land of innovation, we have to reinforce our capacity to attract and retain talent". In this respect, Salado described projects carried out by the Provincial Council to modernise municipalities of less than 20,000 inhabitants and to ensure that digitalisation does not leave anyone on the sidelines.

This year’s guest country at Transfiere is the United Kingdom and a delegation of British academics, scientists and enterprises are in Malaga to take part in the event. Among them is Professor Dame Angela McLean, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser. She is participating in a workshop today, Friday, on building bridges between science and government.