Center for Research and Advanced Studies

The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (Cinvestav) is a Mexican public institution dedicated to the development of science, technology and education at the postgraduate level. It began its activities in 1961 under the direction of the Mexican scientist Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns.

History

The creation of Cinvestav has its origin in the idea of progress of the engineer Manuel Cerrillo Valdivia, who agreed with Eugenio Méndez Docurro, then director of the National Polytechnic Institute, on the strategy and guidelines to found a postgraduate school.

From that moment on, different people, including Méndez Docurro himself, Guillermo Massieu Helguera, Jorge Suárez Díaz, as well as George Harvey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), participated in the planning of an organization that would comply with the purpose of modernizing science in Mexico. The idea was communicated to the President of the Republic, Adolfo López Mateos, by the engineer Méndez Docurro and Víctor Bravo Ahuja. At the proposal of Cerrillo Valdivia, the renowned Mexican physiologist, Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns, was invited not only as a researcher of the new organism, but as an ideal candidate to direct the new institution.

On April 17, 1961, President Adolfo López Mateos met at the National Palace with Jaime Torres Bodet, Secretary of Public Education, and Antonio Ortiz Mena, Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, to sign the decree creating the Cinvestav, a decentralized body of public interest, with its own legal personality and assets that would aim to "prepare researchers, specialized teachers and experts in various scientific and technical disciplines, as well as the solution of technological problems (of the country)."

On May 6, 1961, Cinvestav began activities under the direction of Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns. It started with the departments of Physiology, Mathematics, Physics, Biochemistry and Electrical Engineering, and 16 full-time researchers. Thus he undertook his task of modernizing science in the country. On July 5, 1963, the President of the Republic, Adolfo López Mateos, inaugurated the Cinvestav facilities in Zacatenco, north of Mexico City.

The creation decree was published on Saturday, May 6, 1961 on page five of the Official Gazette of the Federation. Subsequently, on September 17, 1982, President José López Portillo endorsed said decree, ─published on the 24th. September 1982 in the Official Gazette of the Federation─, which remains valid.

Throughout its history, Cinvestav has promoted scientific and technological research, consolidating itself as one of the leaders in these fields in Mexico. Its mission is to prepare specialized scientists and technologists, at the postgraduate level, in various disciplines, as well as to carry out basic and applied research, which allows raising living standards and promoting the development of the nation.

Currently, Cinvestav has a headquarters, seven units and a laboratory, located in strategic regions of the Mexican Republic. This decentralization effort began in 1980 with the Mérida Unit (Yucatán); Later, in 1981, the Irapuato Unit (Guanajuato) was born; In 1982, the Reproductive Biology Laboratory emerged in Tlaxcala (Tlaxcala); two years later, that is, in 1985, the Saltillo Unit (Coahuila) was founded. In 1988, the Guadalajara Unit (Jalisco) was created; Ten years later, in 1998, the Querétaro Unit (Querétaro) emerged and finally, in 2006, the Information Technology Laboratory, in Ciudad Victoria (Tamaulipas).

Profile

Since its creation, Cinvestav has trained a large number of doctors and masters in science, who are located throughout the Mexican Republic and in various parts of the world. Until 2016, four thousand doctors and eight thousand science teachers have graduated from its classrooms and laboratories.

The Center is at the forefront in terms of postgraduate education, since 28 of them are considered internationally competent, that is, with the quality of those taught by the best universities in the world. According to the National Quality Postgraduate Program (PNPC) 2010 evaluated by the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), it is one of the best institutions at this level of education in Mexico.

In 2009 it obtained the Thomson Reuters Prize, as the National Institution with the highest number of citations per researcher in its scientific publications in the last five years and in 2010 the SEP-ANUIES Prize as the best Public Scientific Research Center in the country.

Cinvestav is the only Mexican institution that is among the first 200 research centers with the most scientific content published on the web internationally. In Mexico it is the best positioned institution, and the seventh in Latin America, according to the latest Web Ranking of Research Centers in the World, carried out in 2016 by the Cybermetrics Laboratory, in Spain.

Cinvestav is the third Mexican public institution with the most patent registrations, after the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Currently, their discoveries and inventions are legally protected by 283 industrial protection figures, of which 198 are national and international patents.

To carry out its functions, Cinvestav receives an annual allocation of resources established by the Federal Government in its Expenditure Budget. In addition, the Center obtains its own income from the sale of services, courses, agreements, donations and technology transfer from various sources: state or private companies, decentralized organizations, foreign institutions, the industrial sector and individuals.

Structure

Cinvestav has 28 academic departments, sections and research areas. Its academic staff is made up of 648 scientists, of which 99 percent have a Doctorate degree and 90.5 percent belong to the National System of Researchers (SNI).

The educational offer of the Center is made up of 63 postgraduate programs that are grouped into four large areas of knowledge: Exact and Natural Sciences, Biological and Health Sciences, Technology and Engineering Sciences and Social Sciences and Humanities, which They serve about 3 thousand students a year.

Units, headquarters and laboratories

Each unit and laboratory was created with the purpose of mainly covering local needs, that is, solving specific problems of the region in which it is located.

CINVESTAV Zacatenco

It has 16 Departments that cover the four scientific areas of Cinvestav.

Biological and Health Sciences

• Cellular biology
• Biomedicine Molecular
• Biochemistry
• Pharmacology
• Physiology, Biophysics and Neurosciences
• Genetics and Molecular Biology
• Infectural and Molecular Pathogenesis
• Toxicology

Social Sciences and Humanities

• Educational Mathematics
• Methodology and Theory of Science (transdisciplinary)

Exact and Natural Sciences

• Physics
• Maths
• Chemistry

Technology and Engineering Sciences

• Biotechnology and Bioengineering
• Computation
• Automatic Control
• Electrical engineering
• Nanosciences and Nanotechnology
• Engineering projects section.

CINVESTAV South Headquarters This headquarters has two Departments, one focused on the study of the effects of drugs as tools to understand the processes that underlie relevant diseases and their possible therapeutics. And another dedicated to the training of human resources specialized in educational research and the development of proposals and teaching materials.

Educational Research

Pharmacobiology

CINVESTAV Guadalajara Unit

It has five research areas that focus on electronic design projects, electrical power systems and telecommunications.

• Computation
• Automatic Control
• Electronic Design
• Telecommunications
• Power Electrical Systems

CINVESTAV Irapuato Unit

It has two departments and a laboratory, which focus on research projects related to plant biotechnology and high-quality interdisciplinary research projects around genome sequencing.

• Biotechnology and Biochemistry
• Genetic Plant Engineering
• Advanced Genomics Unit (formerly National Laboratory for Biodiversity)

CINVESTAV Mérida Unit

It has three Departments that focus on research projects related to marine biology, chemistry and environmental sciences. In addition, it has a Marine Station in Telchac Puerto, Yucatán, headquarters of the Jacques-Yves Cousteau Observatory of the Seas and Coasts.

• Resources of the Sea
• Human Ecology
• Applied Physics

CINVESTAV Monterrey Unit

It focuses on conducting interdisciplinary research in the areas of Biomedical Engineering and Physics, as well as Research in Science Education. It has five general lines of research.

• Biochemistry and biophysics of fluids and membranes
• Bioengineering
• Molecular and cellular biology
• Biomedical probability and statistics
• Research in Education

CINVESTAV Querétaro Unit

It focuses on the area of basic and applied science of materials engineering. It is divided into five research groups.

• Multifunctional materials
• Nanomaterials
• Materials for applications in energy and environment
• Bio-organic materials
• Maths

CINVESTAV Saltillo Unit

It focuses on four postgraduate research programs related to the areas of ceramics, metallurgical engineering, robotics, and advanced manufacturing and natural and energy resources.

• Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing
• Sustainability of Natural Resources and Energy (srnye.cinvestav.mx)
• Ceramic Engineering
• Metallurgical Engineering

CINVESTAV Tamaulipas Unit

It focuses on research projects related to computer science and artificial intelligence.

• Information Technology Laboratory

National Laboratories

• National Laboratory for the Development of Scientific Infrastructure in Southeast Mexico for the Study of Advanced Materials of Technological Innovation (Unidad Mérida)
• National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, LANGEBIO (Unidad Irapuato).
• Laboratory of Research and Technological Development in Advanced coatings, LIDTRA (Unidad Querétaro).
• High Resolution Electronic Microscopy National Laboratory for Characterization of Nanostructures (Zapanco Unit).
• National Thermal Projection Laboratory (Queretaro Unit).
• National Laboratory of Experimental Services (Zacatenco).
• PlanTECC National Laboratory for Plant Assessment under controlled conditions, LAN-PlanTECC (Irapuato Unit)
• Reproduction Biology Laboratory. Located in Tlaxcala, this laboratory focuses on research projects related to reproductive behaviors and reproduction biology, animal husbandry in livestock species, sexual hormone action in the central nervous system.
• National Laboratory in Autonomous and Exoesqueletos Vehicles (Unidad Zacatenco)

Postgraduates

Of the 63 postgraduate courses (31 master's degrees and 32 doctorates) taught by Cinvestav, 28 are classified by Conacyt as International Competition, 22 as Consolidated, 5 in Development and 8 as Recent Creation. In this way, Cinvestav is consolidated by its postgraduate educational offer, as one of the best in Mexico. Currently, Cinvestav has two postgraduate courses created under a transdisciplinary approach, that is, working with the fusion of more than two disciplines with the aim of seeking a relationship between different knowledge, focused more on the solution of the problem than on a specific subject..

Doctorate in Scientific and Technological Development for Society: its objective is to prepare scientists and teachers trained to examine, with a high-level transdisciplinary approach, the application of science and technology to the solution of problems. problems facing modern societies.

Doctorate in Nanosciences and Nanotechnology: its objective is to prepare highly specialized scientists with a doctorate degree, capable of forming multidisciplinary groups that promote the academic infrastructure in universities and influence the solution of industrial and social problems from the country.

Prizes and distinctions

• SEP-ANUIES 2010 Award as the best Public Center for Scientific Research in Mexico.
• Thomson Reuters Award 2009, as the Mexican institution with the highest number of appointments by researcher in its scientific publications.
• Scientific Research Awards of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (37).
• Weizmann-AMC Awards (31).
• National Arts and Science Awards (27 awards).
• Rosenkranz Awards Roche México (18).
• Lola and Igo Flisser-Puis-UNAM Awards (14).
• Luis Elizondo-ITESM (8).
• TWAS Awards (9).
• Prince of Asturias Award.
• Palmas de la Academia Francesa.
• Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
• National Order of Merit in Grade of Knight- France (2).
• Ambassador for a Culture of Peace-UNESCO.
• UNESCO International Prize – Equatorial Guinea for Research in Life Sciences.

Agreements

Cinvestav has achieved an international projection thanks to collaboration agreements, both at the research and academic level, with universities and institutes in Germany, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Korea, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain Estonia, United States, France, Holland, Honduras, India, England, Israel, Italy, Japan, Nicaragua, Netherlands, PanamaPeru, Poland, Portugal United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and Venezuela. As of March 2016, 296 International Agreements had been made, of which 123 remain in force and 2 agreements with International Organizations: UNESCO and OAS.

Scholarships

The National Council of Science and Technology grants students who wish to pursue a postgraduate degree at Cinvestav the possibility of accessing a scholarship; To obtain it, all the requirements that Conacyt establishes in its calls issued in January and July must be met.

Cinvestav support. This is awarded through the National Scholarship Program, for research stays, attendance at conferences, obtaining a degree and preparatory work.