On a Wednesday morning in late May 2026, Cuba’s top leader — Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic — traveled to the University of Computer Sciences (UCI), an institution that has embodied founding revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz’s vision of linking academic innovation to the long-term success of the Cuban Revolution for nearly 25 years.
Accompanied by senior government officials including Deputy Prime Minister Eduardo Martínez Díaz, Education Minister Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto, Higher Education Minister Walter Baluja García, and UCI Rector Raydel Montesino Perurena, Díaz-Canel held wide-ranging dialogues with students and faculty, toured campus laboratories and the university’s pioneering K-9 program for children of staff, and observed the institution’s growing software export operations.
Rector Montesino walked the delegation through UCI’s decades-long evolution, from its launch in 2002 with just a single degree program to its current portfolio of four undergraduate credentials: three bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science Engineering, Bioinformatics Engineering, and Cybersecurity Engineering, plus one associate degree in high-demand Network Administration. To date, more than 18,000 students have graduated from the institution, which now counts six faculties, seven development centers, and 2,552 enrolled undergraduates — a figure campus leadership says it is positioned to expand. Even amid the ongoing national energy crisis and persistent U.S. economic pressure, Montesino emphasized UCI’s core commitment to leaving no student behind, adjusting curricula and prioritizing in-person learning where possible. This year alone, 554 students will complete their degrees, 100 more than the 2025 graduating class. While transportation challenges remain the institution’s most pressing operational hurdle, Montesino noted that campus leaders have leaned into adaptive, flexible strategies to keep operations running smoothly, staying true to Fidel’s founding vision of UCI as an experimental teaching-production hub that blends innovation and public service.
One of the most notable adaptive initiatives on display during the tour was UCI’s on-campus primary and secondary school, the Pioneers Project.uci.cu, launched in response to barriers created by the intensified U.S. blockade. When children of UCI faculty and staff who live on campus were cut off from their zoned schools in the La Lisa district due to transport and resource constraints, campus and education leaders repurposed existing university space and teaching talent to launch a full-scale program serving learners from preschool through 9th grade. Education Minister Naima shared that the program, which draws students from multiple local school zones and leverages existing university faculty expertise, has filled a critical gap while creating a replicable model of adaptive education. “There’s a lot of heart behind this experience,” Naima told reporters, noting that while the exact model may not work at every Cuban university, its core approach of leveraging existing institutional potential can be scaled across the country. Even amid the prolonged hardship imposed by the blockade, Naima emphasized, all participating students are on track to complete their grade levels on schedule — a victory for creative resilience in the face of external pressure. During a warm interaction with young students, a second-grade pioneer expressed affection for the Cuban leader, to which Díaz-Canel responded with a call for the next generation to prepare diligently to serve their country.
The final stop on the tour was UCI’s Software Export Laboratories, where more than 600 specialists including students, faculty, and dedicated industry professionals develop digital products for international markets. Dr. Reynaldo Rosado Roselló, who leads the program, explained that the initiative operates on a shared benefit model that generates revenue for the national government, the university, and the participating specialists, all of whom are paid in foreign currency for their work. Over recent years, the program has ramped up its export operations to increase foreign currency earnings for Cuba, with one three-year-old spinout company already generating more than 150 million pesos in domestic revenue and over half a million pesos in foreign currency in 2025. Rosado noted that expanding software exports remains UCI’s top strategic priority, aligned with Fidel’s original vision for the institution: to train top digital talent, drive national digital transformation, and generate critical foreign currency for the Cuban people. Díaz-Canel challenged the UCI community to expand their work further, emphasizing the university’s central role in advancing Cuba’s national artificial intelligence strategy and integrating AI across all sectors of Cuban life. He shared his vision for UCI to become Cuba’s first “Smart University”, calling for accelerated progress toward that goal.
At the close of the tour, Díaz-Canel visited a commemorative plaque marking Fidel Castro’s first visit to UCI on December 12, 2002 — the date now recognized as the institution’s official founding. On that historic day, Fidel called UCI students “the troops of the future”, a phrase that grew into the university’s enduring motto: “Connected to the future, connected to the Revolution.” Speaking to young innovators on campus, Díaz-Canel struck a hopeful tone amid ongoing economic pressure from the United States. “Waking up here today at UCI — with the little school, with the new school model, and now with this development you (the young people) are experiencing — fills one with happiness and, above all, with confidence that, even in the most complex situation, we will overcome it,” he said, framing the campus’s progress as a powerful example of creative resistance: resistance that is not merely about enduring hardship, but about growing and advancing even in the most challenging circumstances. The work underway at UCI, he emphasized, proves that Cuba can continue to build and thrive despite external pressure, laying a strong foundation for future progress across every sector of the nation.
