External Academic Internships

Spanish engineering is highly respected and recognised for its high quality, which is evidenced by the large number of projects carried out in international arenas. The objective of the Master’s degree is to maintain this level also in the cutting-edge area of neurotechnology. To achieve this, it is essential that students carry out external academic internships in companies, hospitals or other entities related to the subject of the Master, considering that the search for excellence begins in the internships themselves in professional centres. These are curricular activities of a formative nature carried out by the students and supervised by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, with the aim of applying and complementing the knowledge, skills and competences acquired in their academic training that will prepare them for the exercise of professional activities.

There is no doubt that external academic internships are beneficial for students, as they provide them with a unique opportunity to complement their learning. Moreover, both external organisations and universities, through their tutors, can interact with the socio-economic environment and gain significant benefits. In short, external academic placements are a win-win situation for everyone: engineering, students and, ultimately, society

The Master’s Degree will seek to broaden students’ knowledge base with real experiences, enable them to start solid professional careers and broaden their future projection through compulsory external academic internships within the designed syllabus. External academic placements are a pre-professional activity in which aspects of formative interest for the student must take precedence. It is the duty of the Master’s management systems to ensure that external academic placements contribute to this end, both in their objectives and in their development, providing the necessary means for this purpose.

Processing of External Academic Internships:

The processing of internships is carried out on the computer platform: https://practicas-externas.upm.es/ where internship offers offered by collaborating entities to be carried out by students enrolled at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid are proposed, processed and managed, in order to respond to the provisions of the study plans.

Duration of the External Academic Placement:

External academic placements must fall within the second semester of the academic year. To ensure that the external academic placements are compatible with the academic activity, the maximum number of hours to be carried out will be 25 hours/week (5 hours/day). It may be up to 35 hours/week (7 hours/day) during June, July and August if the student only has to complete the Master’s Final Project. In order to complete the 6 ECTS corresponding to the external academic internships, each student must complete 180 hours of external academic internships.

Management and Regulatory Framework of External Academic Internships:

The Internship Office of the ETSI Telecommunication of the UPM will be in charge of the administrative aspects of the management of these external academic internships. External academic placements will be governed by the current regulations:

External academic placements may be carried out in collaborating entities: companies, institutions, public and private entities, both national and international: Centres, Research Institutes, Laboratories, Departments of the University itself. Any external academic placement must be regulated by a Framework Educational Cooperation Agreement signed prior to the start of the placement between the UPM and the entity where it is to be carried out.

Students of this Master’s Degree may carry out external academic placements from the moment of their enrolment in the degree, as approved by the External Academic Placement Committee of the UPM on 13/12/2016.

Agreements:

The following agreements must be in place for external academic placements:

  • Framework Educational Cooperation Agreement: Any work placement must be regulated by a Framework Educational Cooperation Agreement signed, prior to the start of the placement, between the UPM and the entity where it is to be carried out. These agreements will have a standard format for all UPM Centres.
  • Individual Educational Cooperation Agreement: this will be generated as a development of the Framework Agreement and is intended to cover each student and internship in particular. It contains, among other aspects, the training project, the educational objectives, the activities to be carried out and the recognition of credits by the university. The equivalence between ECTS and hours of activity is 1 ECTS for 30 hours of activity.

The UPM currently has around 3500 active agreements with entities in which students carry out curricular internships. Appendix I presents a selection of companies, clinical centres and research centres where students of this Master’s Degree can carry out their external academic internships. The UPM has active agreements with all these entities to carry out these internships.

Professional and academic tutors:

Given the formative nature of these external academic placements, these two figures will be necessary for the formalisation of the Individual Educational Cooperation Agreement and under no circumstances may they coincide:

  • The professional tutor: this will be a professional with sufficient knowledge and experience to carry out the tutoring and appointed by the collaborating entity.
  • The academic tutor: will be a lecturer from one of the centres participating in the teaching of this Master’s Degree and his/her function will be to supervise the external academic placements. In the event of not having a tutor, the Work Placement Office will assign a tutor related to the subject of the placement.

Amount of the study grant/scholarship:

At ETSIT, study grants are compulsory (except for curricular internships carried out exclusively in Public Hospitals). The minimum amounts for the academic year 2024/25 are, for Master’s students:

  • up to 25 hours/week: €600/month
  • up to 30 hours/week: €700/month
  • up to 35 hours/week: €800/month

To cover the risks derived from the development of external academic placements, each student must apply for National Mobility insurance at the Secretary’s Office of the ETSI Telecommunications and, in addition, for certain external academic placements (to be indicated in the Agreement), Special Contingencies insurance.

The procedure for external academic placements consists of two simultaneous phases:

  1. Formalisation of the Individual Educational Cooperation Agreement, generally through the UPM Internship Office.
  2. Application for enrolment and monitoring of the external academic internship at ETSIT, always through the ETSIT Internship Application, where each student must first register.

This procedure is explained in detail on the website of the ETSI Telecommunications Internship Office of the UPM.

Other information

Professors and Learning centers

The MUNEUROTEC Master takes advantage of the heterogeneous research force of the UPM, with the participation of specialists from different schools. The teaching center responsible for the program is the Faculty of Telecommunication Engineering. The Faculty of Computer Engineering and the Faculty of Civil Engineering have participated in the creation

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Admission Criteria

The Master’s Degree in Neurotechnology at the UPM is aimed at graduates in biomedical engineering, which will be the recommended entry profile. In addition, graduates in other branches of engineering, such as telecommunication engineering, industrial and automatic engineering, data engineering, or computer engineering, which will constitute the additional entry profile,

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Comunidad UPM en Neurociencia y Neurotecnología | NEUROTEC

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