Who is José Capilla, the hydrogeologist running Universitat Politècnica de València?

José Esteban Capilla Romá was born in Valencia in 1961. His home city is where he did his entire engineering training: he graduated as a Ponts, Canaux et Ports civil engineer from the UPV in 1986, and defended his doctoral thesis there in 1989.

His career quickly took on an international dimension. He was a visiting researcher at Stanford in 1995 and again in 1998, before becoming a visiting professor at MIT between 1999 and 2000. Those stints fed a specialism that stayed with him: hydrogeological modelling and the study of climate change's impact on water resources, a field whose full weight is now clear in a region like Valencia, hit hard by the DANA floods.

Back at the UPV, he led the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering from 2009 to 2013, then served as vice-rector for research from 2013 to 2021. In 2024, Universidad Simón Bolívar honoured him with a Doctor Honoris Causa.

On 12 February 2025, he was re-elected rector of the UPV with 65.17% of the vote, a clear score that strengthens his mandate. Under his leadership, the UPV has set a 2026 budget of 457 million euros, up 7.1%.

In his closing speech for the 2025-2026 academic year, he said: "en un contexto occidental marcado por una polarización creciente y señales preocupantes de retroceso democrático, conviene recordar que la democracia no consiste en que unos se impongan definitivamente sobre otros, sino en construir espacios de convivencia entre personas que piensan de forma distinta" ("in a Western context marked by rising polarisation and worrying signs of democratic backsliding, it's worth remembering that democracy is not about some permanently prevailing over others, but about building spaces where people who think differently can coexist").

On his institution's international strategy: "Las universidades que quieren ser excelentes son internacionales o no lo serán nunca. Hay que apuntar hacia China, es estratégico" ("Universities that want to be excellent are international, or they never will be. We need to aim at China, it's strategic").

Photo credit: photo by Jarmijo-upv, CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, Wikimedia Commons.