Meet our Members: Tecnológico de Monterrey
Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec) has a distinctive reputation for international engagement, combining strong institutional ambition with a sustained outward-looking approach to research, innovation, and education.
Tec is a private, nonprofit, multicampus university with a presence in 28 cities across Mexico. It joined the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) in 2018 and has since been an active contributor to the Network’s collaborative research agenda.
Under President David Garza’s leadership, Tec has strengthened its global engagement through three interrelated priorities: research, innovation, and internationalisation. These priorities reflect Tec’s commitment to addressing complex global challenges through international, interdisciplinary, and multicultural collaboration.
Tec researchers have led and participated in WUN research collaborations across diverse fields aligned with the Network’s focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Projects include developing a low-cost, high-efficiency electric vehicle battery for emerging markets; novel computer-vision methods and synthetic datasets to advance minimally invasive surgery; and non-invasive brain stimulation guided by neural biomarkers to enhance neuromotor performance. More broadly, 55 per cent of Tec’s scientific output is produced through international collaboration, underscoring the institution’s commitment to globally connected research.
For Dr. Garza, international collaboration is essential to addressing global challenges. As he has noted, “it is only with international collaboration that expertise and perspectives are brought together.”
He particularly emphasises the importance of connecting Global South and Global North perspectives:
“Solutions to global challenges can only be found through a joint Global-South–Global North lens. Combining research excellence and capacity building with regional knowledge accelerates curiosity. This powers discovery, innovation, and application.”
This philosophy aligns closely with WUN’s commitment to higher-impact global research collaboration and stronger international partnerships. Tec sees WUN as an important platform for connecting researchers and institutions across regions, advancing interdisciplinary research, and translating research excellence into meaningful regional and global impact.When Tec hosted WUN’s Annual General Meeting in 2023, Dr. Garza captured this ambition succinctly: “When we have that talent and those resources, we have to act and now is when we have to make an impact.” For Tec, WUN is a platform for turning international collaboration into action and impact.