On Wednesday, July 30, 2025, six faculty researchers from the University of the Basque Country visited Boise State to tour a variety of research and lab locations. One of many events of Boise State’s Aste Nagusia, or Basque Week, the Engineering Discovery Tour provided an opportunity for top researchers to connect across continents, opening doors for future collaboration in computer science, biomedical science and more.
The engineering tour traversed an array of Boise State’s state-of-the-art labs. Basque visitors heard from Boise State faculty including Owen McDougal, a natural products chemist whose lab partners with the food and dairy industry. They heard from organic chemist Jeunghoon Lee, whose research involves DNA nanotechnology, and Paul Davis, the assistant dean and director of the Surface Sciences Lab. Numerous graduate-level researchers also spoke, including students working to create synthetic muscle tissue in Boise State’s biomechanics and mechanobiology facility.
Amy Fleischer, dean of the College of Engineering, led one of the tour groups. She said that her group consistently expressed enthusiasm and interest for Boise State’s facilities.
“You just see that spark when you bring somebody into the lab,” Fleischer said. “You see their eyes light up, and you see the possibilities start to emerge.”
The partnership between the University of the Basque Country and Boise State goes back to 1974, when Professor Pat Bieter organized the Oñati exchange program and several faculty from the College of Engineering visited the University of the Basque Country in 2024.
“It was really great to see people who already knew each other from their visit last year, rekindling those friendships, that spirit of collaboration,” Fleischer said. “This is something that we’ve already started and that is going to become much deeper in the future.”
Visiting physicist Javier Aizpurua, who works in the University of the Basque Country’s Department of Electronics and Electricity and Donostia International Physics Center, was especially interested in the high-tech instruments in Boise State’s labs.
“I was impressed by the quality of the materials and the instruments that you have here, facilities that are very unique to one or two places in the whole U.S.,” Aizpurua said. “I was surprised by a couple of highlights — quantum optics, materials characterization — but overall, the most impressive thing was to see the whole compact, diverse and robust means of advanced characterization that you can get with these instruments.”
Aizpurua added that he sees opportunities for research collaboration in artificial intelligence, quantum optics and materials characterization.
Learn more on the Basque Week website.