About the lab

The UniCAD research group focuses on the area of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technologies as well as the design and implementation of specific processing architectures (SoC, FPGA,...). Specifically, the group investigates the generation of trajectories for machine-tools, advanced geometric design technologies, rapid prototyping, virtual prototyping, product customization, and hardware acceleration of algorithms using FPGAs and GPUs.

Featured research (1)

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has had a global impact that has affected all areas of people’s lives. However, people have different capacities to adapt and cope with the adversities and traumatic events that may have occurred during the pandemic with different levels of resilience. One collective affected by this global crisis was university students, who had to face an unprecedented academic situation, resulting in some abandoning their studies. This study aims to analyse whether the resilience of the students could be related to academic dropout. To carry out this research, we assessed the resilience of 1676 university students from 11 universities in Ecuador. To do so, a committee of experts from the Ecuadorian Association of Social Work Education Centres and 11 Ecuadorian universities designed a questionnaire and sent it to the entire sample. Subsequently, we compared the levels of resilience between university students who withdrew from university during the COVID-19 pandemic with those who continued their studies by using a multivariate analysis. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences in all variables analysed. The students who obtained the highest scores were those who continued their studies, and those students who dropped out obtained the lowest scores. In summary, we found that school dropout among Ecuadorian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic was due to low levels of resilience. Therefore, increasing student resilience could improve university retention rates and, in turn, academic performance and future life prospects.

Lab head

Antonio Jimeno-Morenilla
Department
  • Computer Sciences and Computation
About Antonio Jimeno-Morenilla
  • Prof. Antonio Jimeno-Morenilla currently works at the Computer Technology Department, University of Alicante. He has been researching into CAD/CAM applied to the footwear sector for over 20 years. Furthermore, he has led the University of Alicante’s research group UniCAD since 2008. Its results have appeared in more than 70 publications in high impact factor journals (JCR). Another line of research deals with the impact of socio-emotional skills on ICT students.

Members (12)

Sergio Cuenca-Asensi
  • University of Alicante
Antonio Martínez-Álvarez
  • University of Alicante
Virgilio Gilart Iglesias
  • University of Alicante
Francisco A. Pujol
  • University of Alicante
Jose-Luis Sanchez-Romero
  • University of Alicante
Javier Ferrandez
  • University of Alicante
Aldrin Marcel Espín León
  • Central University of Ecuador
Faustino Salas
  • INESCOP Footwear Technological Institute
Jose Garcia-Rodriguez
Jose Garcia-Rodriguez
  • Not confirmed yet
Francisco A. Pujol-López
Francisco A. Pujol-López
  • Not confirmed yet
Diego Marcos Jorquera
Diego Marcos Jorquera
  • Not confirmed yet
Jose-Luis Sanchez-Romero
Jose-Luis Sanchez-Romero
  • Not confirmed yet
Francisco Javier Ferrández-Pastor
Francisco Javier Ferrández-Pastor
  • Not confirmed yet
Jeronimo Mora
Jeronimo Mora
  • Not confirmed yet

Alumni (3)

Rafael Maestre
  • CETEM Technological Centre
Miguel Davia-Aracil
  • University of Alicante
Felipe Restrepo-Calle
  • National University of Colombia