PROVIDENCE – Brown University will team up with Spain-based Banco Santander SA in a collaboration that will include a new annual series of Brown International Advanced Research Institutes, the university said today.

Beginning next June, the institutes will bring together “promising young academics from around the world to share their work with one another and meet with leading figures in their field in an intensive workshop-like setting,” to address “cutting-edge issues,” the school said. The sessions will be convened by top professors from Brown and elsewhere, with global experts from various fields serving as visiting faculty.

Ileana Porras, a visiting professor at the university’s Watson Institute for International Studies, has been named the program’s director for 2008-2009.

“We expect the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes to make a significant contribution to global research through transnational academic collaboration, building networks and providing needed professional development opportunities for young scholars embarking on lives in research and teaching,” David Kennedy, Brown University’s vice president for international affairs, University Professor of Law and David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations and the Watson Institute’s interim director, said in a statement. “The institutes will be a significant program in a university-wide effort to internationalize by utilizing our convening power to foster high-level international intellectual and policy conversations.”

Topics are expected to include “fields in which Brown has exceptional strength,” such as technology and entrepreneurship, bioengineering, nanotechnology, international affairs, development economics, history and archaeology, population studies and planetary geology, the university said.

The BIARI series is planned as the flagship of “a comprehensive cooperation agreement between Brown University and Banco Santander.” Besides the annual institutes, their collaboration will include:

• Grants to enable Brown students to spend one term studying abroad, at universities around the world.

• Internships for selected students at Santander banks around the world.

• Spanish-language instruction for students and other members of the Brown community, which will be presented via e-learning in conjunction with the nonprofit Cervantes Institute, a global organization established by the Spanish government in 1991 to preserve and promote Spanish and Hispanic-American language and culture.

Santander already has co-sponsored a pilot for the BIARI program, which was hosted by Brown this summer “with great success,” the university noted. The bank’s participation is part of an ongoing effort by its Santander Universidades’ Global Division to support academic projects at more than 700 universities and research institutions around the world.

Banco Santander – the largest bank in Spain and one of 10 largest worldwide – has more than 65 million customers and nearly 133,200 employees. Its acquisition of Philadelphia-based Sovereign Bancorp Inc. (NYSE: SOV) is expected to close in the first quarter of 2009, pending regulatory and other customary approvals. (READ MORE)

The bank’s affiliation with Brown University is slated to become official tomorrow, with a ceremony at the university’s John Hay Library in Providence, where Santander Chairman Emilio Botín, the parent of two Brown graduates, will be joined by Brown Provost David Kertzer.

Brown University is an Ivy League institution offering nearly 100 programs of study to its nearly 7,200 undergraduate, graduate and medical students. For more information, visit www.brown.edu.

Banco Santander SA (NYSE: STD) is an international banking group with total assets of more than 953 billion euros. It has nearly 133,200 employees at its headquarters in Madrid and 11,685 branches in continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Latin America. Additional information is available at www.santander.com.