These are units whose specific function is research and extension or service to society.

• They are equivalent to what departments, laboratories, institutes etc. are in many other universities, i.e. cross-faculty and defined by a topic or knowledge area on which they carry out research.
  
  
• In keeping with our environment, our research is mainly applied. It seeks to make the transfer of science and technology to society into a viable operation, and carry out extension and services.
  
  
• The CITTES are composed of teams of young professors and students who are encouraged to dream of possibilities.
  
  
• These teams maintain intense horizontal relationships and have a strong focus on facts.
  
  
• They are groups that have a strong sense of collegiate leadership and are intrinsically motivated; they know that the group is always greater than the best of them.
  
  
• They live by the Socratic idea that “All I know is that I know nothing”; but their capacity for capturing new ideas and for creativity is enormous. Nonetheless, institutional elements are essential for their service to society to be truly effective.
  
  
• They priorize relationships with the productive sector and the incorporation of advances in science and technology to resolve its needs.
  
  
• They seek to make the curriculum, and the different dimensions of knowledge management, (research, postgraduate degrees, publications etc.), more flexible, in keeping with the future needs of society.
  
  
• They are developing a teaching model in which the student discovers a relationship with society through productive projects as a realistic model of professional activity.
  
  
• They are creating new and imaginative alliances with business, with the State, and with different national and international organizations
  
  
• Within the University they are developing an “entrepreneurial spirit” in its widest sense.
  
  
• They work with team spirit and co-responsibility for, as Christ said: “a divided kingdom cannot stand”.
  
  
• They have established a fluid, realistic and flexible relationship with a very complex social environment which is undergoing profound changes.

About 435 instructor-researchers are working full-time in the CITTES, where students are also playing more and more of a role in the development of real projects.When they finish their studies they will have had a large amount of direct professional experience.

The CITTES are becoming genuine “research incubators” which, after an initial learning stage, are now generating an increasing number of proposals for investigation and productive projects, to contribute new knowledge and practical applications as a response to the needs of our society.

At present UTPL has 23 Centers of Research, Technology Transfer, Extension and Services.

Through the structure of the CITTES, the University has generated an alternative method of self-financing, which also pays interest in terms of improvement of academic quality.