IUC 2013 Phase 1 UO

The IUC programme addresses themes of national and regional significance and focuses on research, innova-tion, education, and extension of the cooperation results from the university to all the eastern of Cuba, focusing on achieving better indicators related to sustainable development and academic performance.
The focal areas of this programme and the specific projects are coherent with the national priorities of Cuba and those of VLIR-UOS country strategy. Project 1 deals with food security, sustainable agriculture production, envi-ronment and climate impact mitigation. Project 2 focuses on public health services and technologies. Project 3 strengthens capacities in biotechnological research from natural products. Project 4 focuses on the challenges related to social and cultural local development and heritage preservation. Project 5 copes with the development of new (renewable) energy sources, biofuels and clean technologies. Finally, the efforts in terms of institutional capacity building focus on institutional ICT policy (infrastructure, high performance computing, library information services, user platforms), academic English capacity development and installation of a reference center for English testing (CATFLAG)  in the Eastern Region of Cuba and also the strengthening of scientific policy (basic and natural sciences) including also the pooling of central lab infrastructure and attention for research and technology transfer and intellectual property rights, etc. The programme is also supported by a Programme Support Unit which is put down as project (9) of this IUC programme.