María Esteban Casañas, an ex alumni of the British Council School is taking a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) for Architectural Design at MIT (United States). She graduated in Archtecture from Edinburgh University (United Kingdom) and has a Masters degree from the Barlett School of Architecture at University College London (United Kingdom). Throughout her professional and academic career she has taken part in many international exhibitions, such as the 13th Biannual Venice Architecture Exhibition and she has worked in a variety of international institutions and cities including Madrid, Paris, Edinburgh, London, Los Angeles, Hangzhou and Rome.
Her projects and her writing have been published in magazines and books and she has won numerous awards and grants. In 2012, she worked at the famous architectural studio Dominique Perrault Architecture (Paris) and between 2015-2016 she was also part of the prestigious firm, Grimshaw Architects (London). Since 2016, she has been lecturing in Korea, the United Kingdom and Spain.
PRESS RELEASE FROM LA CAIXA:
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- Since they were first launched in 1982, 3.215 university students have been able to broaden their education experience abroad with a grant from ”la Caixa”. 30 students from Madrid have currently been selected to get a ”la Caixa” grant, which will allow them to follow postgraduate studies abroad.
- These 30 Madrid students received their ”la Caixa” grants from Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Spain at the 36th edition of the event.
- A total of 120 university students were chosen by ”la Caixa” in 2017. The winners, chosen from a very competitive environment, will be able to get into some of the best universities in the world.
- Between 1982 and 2017, Obra Social ”la Caixa”, has invested a total of more than 151 million euros in grants, for postgraduate study abroad. This makes it one of the most important private sector programmes of its kind in Spain and one of the most relevant in Europe.
Madrid, 10th of April, 2018. Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Spain were the guests of honour at the “la Caixa¨award ceremony which took place at the CaixaForum Madrid. Grants were presented to the 120 chosen candidates for 2017. They will now be able to take up their pstgraduate studies abroad. This is the 36th edition of the programme.
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The ceremony was also attended by Román Escolano, Economy Minister for the Spanish Government; Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, Education, Culture and Sport Minister for the Spanish Government; Isidro Fainé, President of the ”la Caixa” Bank Foundation; and Jaume Giró, Managing Director of the ”la Caixa” Bank Foundation.
Javier Ventura-Traveset, himself an award winner from the United States in 1990, spoke to everyone on behalf of all previous ”la Caixa” award winners. A Telecommunications engineer, he has worked for the European Space Agency (ESA) for the last 25 years, and he is currently Executive Secretary to the scientific assessment board of the Galileo programme (GSAC) for ESA; he is also Director of the Satellite Navigation Science Office for ESA, an adviser to the Director at ESAC and Spokesperson for ESA in Spain. Ventura-Traveset has been involved in many different space programmes: in satellite communications, in ground observation, in scientific programmes on microgravity and technology transfer and on satellite navigation.
The 120 grants awarded this year, were distributed as follows:
The average age of the grant holders this year is 24.6 years old, and the breakdown by gender is 46.7 % women and 53.3 % men.
In 2017, there have been grants awarded to candidates across 32 different subjects. Those most heavily represented were engineering and technology (19), economics and business studies (15), biology (7), physics (7), architecture (6) and philology and linguistics (6). And by type of degree, 76 students received a grant to undertake a Masters, 43 for PhD´s and 1 for a research project.
As regards the provenance of grant winners in 2017, there were 30 from different Spanish provinces and 1 from abroad (France). Barcelona and Madrid top the list of provinces with the largest number of grant holders with 35 and 30 respectively, followed by Valencia (6), Granada (5) and Burgos (4).