Among them, four opted to carry out their mandatory internships at CIC energiGUNE, to which another student who did the third semester at Amiens joined. The five students are currently finishing the fourth and last semester, with the objective of doing their Master’s Final Thesis, and some of them have manifested their interest on staying at CIC energiGUNE after this period.

One of them is Nahom Enkubahri, student from Ethiopia and scholarship recipient by CIC energiGUNE at the 2019-2021 call. “I have enjoyed the experience very much, especially, because the researchers are excellent and the facilities are high-quality and perfect to carry out our training”, he assures. “In fact, we had everything we needed at our reach, without forgetting about the quality of the teaching staff, the organization and the center’s welcoming... It has been a very productive experience so I am delighted to have chosen to come to the Basque Country”.

In September this year the third semester of the 2020-2022 call will begin, with the presence, once again, of several international students in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and CIC energiGUNE. “We are very happy with the level of the students and with the high level of internationality that MESC+ offers, even though we would like there to be more applicants from the Basque Country because energy storage is a profession of the future”, has assured General Manager of CIC energiGUNE Nuria Gisbert. “We throw ourselves into making the students’ experience the best possible one and that affects in the capacity of talent attraction that we generate, because a lot of students that have done their internships with us, have come back to do their theses”.

The MESC+ Erasmus Mundus Master has consolidated itself as one of the principal programs of highly qualified training in the face of new needs and challenges of the decarbonized economy. In fact, for the 2021-2023 edition the highest number of applications in its 17 years of history has been reached, with 315 applications for 30 offered places, applications received from Pakistan, Nigeria and India have stood out because of their volume. About the internationality degree, from the consortium they remember that in the previous call 30 students were selected from 22 different countries, and two years ago it was 28 students from 19 different countries.

Likewise, and in line with the Master’s reputation and the growing interest of the students, the applications have been subjected to a very demanding selection process. It needs to be highlighted, from a gender perspective, that even though the applications from male students are more numerous (75%-25%), in the final selection of the last to two years an absolute parity has been reached based only on merits, which demonstrates the high quality of applications submitted by women.