History
The Institute of Engineering is the result of diverse UNAM initiatives, university students working on the industry, and more than 40 local governments. The first attempt to found the Institute of Engineering was in 1944 through an agreement of the University Board to "create an Institute of Engineering, as resources become available".Post-war government, deeply concerned about the infrastructure of the country (dams, irrigation districts, tunnels, bridges, roads, airports and other civil works) encouraged Mexican young people to build such projects.
Some of these people saw the need to create the Institute of Engineering, A.C., whose registration dates from 1955. Among the most important promoters of such organization were engineers Nabor Carrillo, Javier Barros Sierra, Bernardo Quintana, among others. They thought that the best option was to incorporate the Institute of Engineering into the Engineering School while the School was settling at the University campus. In 1956, the Institute of Engineering already was a university dream come true.
The first financial sponsor for the Institute was ICA (Civil Engineers Associated), which contributed to the Institute with technicians and executives as well as with engineering-related problems in need of solution. The first facilities of the Institute were in the basements of the Geology Institute at that time. These facilities now belong to the Foreign Language Teaching Center of UNAM. The first building constructed for the Institute due to external income as opposed as university budget was the Raúl Sandoval Landázuri Bay where some of our structural engineering and hydraulics laboratories are now located.
ICA paid for all the expenses of the Institute during the course of the first year, seventy five percent a year later, fifty percent in the third year, and one-fourth during the fourth year in order to transfer research costs to the public sector. During 1960, almost all research costs of the then-named School's Research Division were paid by the Ministry of Public Works (currently SCT), the National Commission of Irrigation (later the Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources), the Federal Electric Power Commission; and other government organizations depending upon the problems to be studied. All these organizations required high quality technology for the development of national infrastructure.
Today, the Institute is meeting those engineering needs. Another very important financial portion of the Institute's resources comes from institutions that support scientific research such as UNAM itself, the CONACyT (National Council for Science and Technology ), international organizations and science-supporting foundations. A small monetary portion is obtained from private companies such as ICA that requires technological support or development from the Institute.
Approximately half of the Institute's members do not have a civil engineering background. The four or five prestige areas that characterized the beginning of the Institute are now three times larger and include a wide mixture of modern engineering disciplines and interdisciplinary studies. The areas that our resources finance are basic training of our students conducting their thesis subjects and publishing articles.
The current four areas of research are: structural engineering, seismology, geotechnical and structural dynamics and creation of urban construction standards; hydraulics and environmental engineering that includes fluid dynamics, bio-remediation and environmental biological processes; electromechanical engineering which also includes automation, systems and instrumentation and computer engineering (hardware and software), with emerging groups in database management, networks, artificial intelligence and telecommunications.
Despite its high specialization degree and its innovative and growing contributions to universal knowledge, the Institute preserves its important role of making high-quality, original, useful and highly competitive engineering. The versatility of its organization results from a high level of independence from its members. This makes it easier to solve exterior requirements with high efficiency. In the future, the Institute plans to be a national referee for engineering and be the main player in technological development. It will support more effectively the training of experts and work together with the School of Engineering at UNAM. It will reinforce its participation in state of the art university programs, its liaisons with industry and private institutions, and the development of new technology and collaboration with other institutions.
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