Providing basic knowledge about human cerebral cortex development at embryonic and early fetal stage is the goal of the research project led by Dr. Lorena Sulz, which will be conducted during the next three years.

According to reports, some psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, begin during embryonic development. Most of the studies on this topic have been conducted on animal samples, due to ethical restraints and limited access to human embryos. This is the reason why the field of human embryology related to neurology is an area which has not been thoroughly explored.

In this context, Dr. Lorena Sulz, academic of Universidad de Santiago’s School of Medicine, will carry out the study “Role of nitric oxide in human cerebral cortex morphogenesis”, which intends to gather critical information about the mechanisms involved in the development of nerve cells during the first weeks of pregnancy.

The study will be conducted during the next three years and is funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Department (Dicyt) of Universidad de Santiago. It is a unique study as it is the first time that this branch of embryology involves human samples, which were obtained from de Institution’s Embryo-Fetology collection.

The idea is to gather basic knowledge about this topic in order to explain if the presence of nitric oxide is also essential for producing new nerve cells in human cortex, as it has already been proved in animal samples and in neuronal regeneration processes, both in human beings and mice. “We want to know if this molecule is expressed in the cerebral cortex being developed and identify in what areas and at what stages it is present. In this way, we can infer approximately the process in which it is involved,” the academic explains.

The study will be carried out in two stages. The first one will completely focus on the morphological analysis of cells and embryos being used. This stage, which is under execution at this moment, will allow describing the human cerebral cortex development process. After identifying each phase, the second stage will allow identifying cells that produce nitric oxide and the process in which it would be involved.

The study will be conducted at the Embryology Unit of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Universidad de Santiago, led by Dr. Jaime Pereda, the project`s co-investigator, M.S. Carlos Godoy and Dr. Sulz. The three professionals, experts in their areas of research interest, complement each other’s work in a way that has helped to a good execution of their projects. “In general, the three of us work together because we use very similar techniques: only the molecule and the body organ of interest are different. We have adjusted to each other very well,” Dr. Sulz adds.

However, the expectations are long-term. The research seeks to establish some theoretical basis for human cerebral cortex development, in order to develop new studies on this topic. The results will be presented in different papers in specialized publications and in different congresses and conferences.

Finally, Dr. Lorena Sulz expects that during the research, they will be able to prove that nitric oxide takes part in human cerebral cortex development, just like it does in laboratory animals. “As it is basic science, it only provides a knowledge base. But if nitric oxide is known to be significant in cerebral cortex development, further care should be taken so as not to interrupt this process during the critical period, preventing potential malformations. This additional knowledge could be a contribution to prenatal care,” the researcher concludes.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Professor Saúl Contreras, academic at the Department of Education, is developing the Fondecyt Project “Early Teacher Training for Science Education” that seeks to analyze the academic performance of 1,200 Teaching Training Program students across the country to contribute with an explanatory model on how future teachers internalize and implement their curricular teaching knowledge.
• According to professor Contreras, this instrument will put a strain on the Inicia Test,” because the latter evaluates future teachers at the end of their training. “Our idea is to evaluate students during all their training process,” to obtain a comprehensive and timely knowledge about it.
• Professor Contreras presented the first results of this study at international conferences in Tarragona and Barcelona, Spain.

The quality of education is today a core topic in the public policies debate and it has become one of the key demands of different social sectors.

But this quality is affected by different variables, like the good or poor education received by those who will be responsible for teaching new generations, that is to say, Early Teaching Training, (FDI, in Spanish). This is why Dr. Saúl Contreras, PhD in Education of Universidad de Santiago de Chile is working on the project “Early Teaching Training for Science Education”, funded by Fondecyt, that seeks to create a model and an instrument to evaluate the training process of pre-service teachers. As a result, this would allow training institutions to review the decision making process regarding training matters.

The study considers a national sample of 1,200 trainee teachers in math and experimental science specializations. The research team led by Dr. Contreras will do the corresponding follow up for four years.

“We seek to create a model and an instrument to explain how students acquire teaching competences and skills. In the context of the study, we are going to provide important data to each participating institution,” Dr. Contreras says. He adds that this information will be very useful to correct the course of early teacher training.

“It will put a strain on the INICIA Test”

Professor Contreras claims that among the side effects of this study, “it will put a strain on the Inicia Test,” the voluntary test to evaluate graduate teachers in different contents. “It does not make any sense to expect a quality education by thinking that we can achieve it just through measuring instruments like Simce, PSU or the Inicia Test.”

Professor Contreras also stresses that the Inicia Test evaluates pre-service teachers at the end of their training programs. “We propose to have a systematic assessment instrument during the whole training process and not only at the end of it. Because we should ask ourselves if the results of the Inicia Test are not good and the students already graduated, what happen to them? Should we give them remedial courses? It is too late to do it”, he answers.

For all the above, the instrument studied by this researcher at Universidad de Santiago de Chile becomes essential, because, according to Professor Contreras, it is not about preparing students like pre-university schools do: it is “creating and applying an instrument to evaluate future teachers at certain time points during their training. And this is a decision of the institutions that internally choose to help their students.”

Regarding the assessment tests, Dr. Contreras says that he totally agrees with their application, “otherwise it would be impossible to know how we are doing,” but these instruments should be developed “together with the subjects and starting with them, because they also need to be relevant,” he explains.

Professor Contreras is so convinced of the effectiveness of his proposal that he does not doubt that, after applying the assessment instrument for four years, it may be applied at a national level, in the context of a public policy. He thinks that it “can also be implemented in the technical- professional formation.”

Although the first stage of collection of data was finished only a few weeks ago- with the collaboration of teacher training programs of universities from Arica to Punta Arenas- professor Contreras presented the first results of this project at the International Congress of University Teaching and Innovation (CIDIU, in Spanish), held at Tarragona, Spain and then, at the Edulearn VI International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, in Barcelona, Spain.

These first steps allow seeing significant changes in future teachers’ training that, in the end, will affect the quality of education.

 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr Laura Almendares Calderón, professor at the Technological Faculty of Universidad de Santiago, presented her study “Development of a technology to replace prickly pear skin with a peel to keep the physiological, microbiological and organoleptic properties of the fresh fruit” at the Expo Milano 2015 (Italy). Dr Almendares presented the innovation in an activity devoted to the best sustainable development practices for food security.

Dr Laura Almendares Calderón, professor at the Technological Faculty of our University, carried out a technical visit to the Expo Milano 2015 (Italy) in order to get an insight of the food situation around the world. She was able to see a wide variety of raw materials, manufactured goods, equipment and supplies exhibited by more than one hundred countries. The activity had the presence of leaders from all over the world, like President Michelle Bachelet, who opened the Chilean Pavillion.

In this context, Dr Almendares, director of the FIA-USACH Project, PYT-2012-0033, “Development of a technology to replace prickly pear skin with a peel to keep the physiological, microbiological and organoleptic properties of the fresh fruit”, presented her work at the BSDP Week.

The activity started with an exhibition of photos, porters, brochures and other information material related to this matter. The academic was able to show the results of this Chilean innovative project to people from different countries, at the Urban Center, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, in downtown Milano, between June 10^th and 13^th.

Chile participated in the competition “Feeding Knowledge”, a program created to contribute to the permanent legacy of the Expo Milano 2015.

With that purpose in mind, a document will be generated containing policies and key recommendations to create an effective knowledge system in the food security field in the Mediterranean Region. The final version of this document will be available in September this year.

Selection of proposals

The proposals submitted by eligible candidates underwent a strict admission control by the International Selection Committee, which is responsible for the final evaluation, using nine pre-established criteria.

The proposals that did not meet one or more of the admission criteria were not considered as “Good Practices in Food Safety.”

The ones that were well evaluated officially became “participating initiatives”, like the work presented by Dr Almendares. 

Her work was included in the priority theme “Food consumption habits: diet, environment, society, economy and health.”

This theme groups all projects which objectives are focused on research activities that evaluate the impact of current diets on the environment, economy, society, culture, health and nutritional sustainability.

This was the only Chilean study presented at the activity and it was registered as ‘9712. Development of methodology to replace prickly pear skin for enriched eatable peel. Chile. 25’.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The research, led by Dr. Miguel Maldonado, professor at the Metallurgical Engineering Department, intends to optimize this process through new on-line air measurement equipment.

During the last couple of years, we have heard about a decline in copper production, and according to experts this is one of the reasons why the quality of the mineral has been reduced. One way to revert this situation is improving mining procedures, which is a priority for mining industry.

One of these processes is flotation, a method used to separate valuable minerals like copper from others. The process starts once the rock is ground and mixed with water to form a pulp. Some reagents that modify the mineral surface are added to this mixture. In this way, when bubbles of air are forced up through the pulp, they collide with particles and the ones containing copper, for example, go up to the surface making a froth rich in valuable mineral, ready to be removed.

This is the method studied by Dr. Miguel Maldonado, professor at the Metallurgical Engineering Department. “Although today improvements have been made to flotation process- by means of devices that measure the air flow forced into a flotation equipment or the use of cameras that continuously monitor de physical properties of the froth- we still do not have a full knowledge of how air dispersion in the bubbles affects the metallurgical performance of the process,” the researcher said.

This encouraged the academic to do a research project called “Estimating on-line air concentration in flotation systems,” funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Department (Dicyt) of Universidad de Santiago.

“We believe that this variable is important when determining the process performance, as it is related to the surface area available to collect the particles containing valuable mineral and, therefore, to the complete recovery of copper,” the researcher explained.

The researcher said that the project was born while he was doing his postdoctoral research in Canada, at McGill University, considered a pioneer institution in proposing ways of measuring this variable. At that time, while he was studying this technique, he found out a problem with the interpretation of Maxwell’s equation, which would lead to a measurement error.

For this reason, the academic decided to insist on seeking new techniques in order to solve the problem; this time, with a better knowledge of the system.

At the first stage of the research, essential aspects of the error made will be studied. For this purpose, experiments to get a better understanding of the Maxwell’s equation will be performed. McGill University will also take part in this research by sending a flotation column to support the study and by developing papers together about this topic.

At the second stage, new techniques will be explored to find a method that estimates the air concentration in real time, in order to control and optimize the process.

In the academic’s opinion, “the efficient recovery of valuable minerals like copper is very important, and this measurement method could provide significant information for optimizing the process. This will have all kinds of benefits, such as reducing the reagents added or reducing the water used. This fact is also important if we consider that in most mining operations the water resource is scarce.”

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• In order to meet the goals set by Universidad de Santiago in the context of the “Sustainable Campus” Clean Production Agreement, the University Social Responsibility program developed the first training workshop on this matter, oriented to students, academics and administrative staff.
• The initiative is one of the institutional actions to promote the knowledge on sustainability and to meet the goal of reducing the use of energy by 5% in the campus before March 2015, according to Santiago Peredo, RSU program’s alternate Director.
• The next workshop- on composting and vegetable gardens management- is scheduled for August. Also, the RSU program will hold seminars on the topics stemmed from the Institutional Sustainability Reports: human rights, decent work conditions, universal access to people with different skills, healthy eating and energy efficiency.

“People have become aware of environmental or sustainability matters. What we must manage now is to change some behaviors and develop some habits to be consistent with this already existing awareness,” Santiago Peredo, alternate Director of the University Social Responsibility (RSU, in Spanish) program said at the end of the first training workshop, “Self-diagnosis of energy use in buildings”, that was held by academics of Universidad de Santiago, on Friday 11th.

The workshop is part of the institutional actions to meet the goals set in the “Sustainable Campus” Clean Production Agreement (APL, in Spanish) of 2013, that seek to "promote training in this matter for professionals, students and academics of the University, and, in turn, to meet the goal of reducing the use of energy by 5% in the campus, before March 2015,” the RSU program’s alternate Director explained.

The workshop included two talks about energy efficiency. The first one was given by Professor Juan Araya, of the Bachillerato program, and the second one, by Professor Fernando Corvalán, of the Department of Geographical Engineering.

Professor Araya referred to the concept of sustainability in three interrelated aspects: environment, society and economy. The balance among the three of them becomes the sustainability equation. Professor Corvalán talked about energy efficiency in buildings, stressing the current actions taken in the building sector to save energy and the analysis of important supplementary aspects like heating, refrigeration and supply systems.

Regarding the campus, Dr. Corvalán explained that it was built according to standards that were not concerned for energy saving, such as the former EAO building and the buildings around the Planetarium. However, he emphasized that the new buildings mean an opportunity for energy sustainability.

Students, academics, professionals and administrative staff from the five units that voluntarily signed the University’s APL took part in the workshop: the Department of Geographical Engineering, the Technological Faculty, the Faculty of Administration and Economics, the Bachillerato program and the School of Architecture.

Waste management and vegetable gardens

“We prepared this series of workshops to meet the goals of training in sustainability and reducing the use of energy at the University, among others,” the RSU program’s alternate Director reiterated, as this is one of the actions established in the “Sustainable Campus” Clean Production Agreement.

The next workshop is scheduled for August and it will be about composting and vegetable gardens management, “because another goal is to reduce the solid waste produced at the University and this action could lead to new recycling processes that are not implemented now.”

“There are some initiatives to collect paper and glass in some recycling spots. We still have pending the organic waste treatment, as it is collected by an external service. The idea is that the University takes charge of the organic waste management and one way to do it is composting and the use of vegetable gardens,” Santiago Peredo added.

Pending tasks

Together with the sustainability workshops, the RSU program is planning continuous seminars that will include presentations and debates on five of the topics stemmed from the Institutional Sustainability Reports (2008-2012): human rights, decent work conditions, universal access to people with different skills, healthy eating and energy efficiency.

These five aspects are the ones that the reports have shown as weaknesses or needs. In these seminars open to the community that the RSU program plans to give every first Tuesday of the month (from August to December), the participants will evaluate the aspects that could be addressed in the workshops, according to the interests of the community.

 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Diego Barría and Francisco Castañeda, professors at the Faculty of Administration and Economics of Universidad de Santiago, participated in a project of Jean Monnet Networks, an action co-funded by the European Union and led by the University of Milan.

   

  On June 25^th and 26^th, representatives of Europe, Asia and the Americas participated in the XIV European Workshop "Major Public Enterprises in a Global Perspective”, in Milan, Italy.

  Renowned international experts participated as speakers, like Massimo Florio of University of Milan; Lars-Erik Fredrickson (Chair OECD Working Party on State Ownership and Privatization Practices); and Richard Kozul-Wright, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) representative.

  Dr Francisco Castañeda, representative of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, said that the goal after this experience is to produce a working paper by September 2015 for CIRIEC-Belgium and University of Milan. “We agreed in publishing a paper in the Italian Journal of Public Economics by December 2015,” he added.

  Professors Barría and Castañeda gave a presentation during the conference and they said that corporate governance of state-owned enterprises has become a subject of great interest. “The OECD has been promoting best practices with regards to transparency, dissemination of information, election of public companies directors and the relation with stakeholders,” they said.

  According to these economists, indicators like financial performance, financial leverage levels, covenants, corporate bond issuance, and alternatives for getting resources to undertake new investment projects that allow sustainability in this type of company, should be evaluated.

  However, the "State-Owned Enterprises in the Market Place" OECD guidelines are more complex to implement in big state-owned companies.

  The Jean Monnet European Networks are made up of six universities:

  • Università degli Studi di Milano (leading University) – Italy

  • Ǻbo Akademi University School of Business and Economics – Finland

  • University of Greenwich – United Kingdom

  • Universität Leipzig – Germany

  • Université de Rouen – France

  • WU Wirtschaftuniversität – Austria

  Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The Academic Vice President, Fernanda Kri, said that after testing the pilot program in more than a thousand students of the Faculty of Engineering, the system that combines on-line learning opportunities with face-to-face sessions, proved to work in a similar way to a traditional course. “The goal is to implement this system for all our undergraduate programs in the first semester 2014, according to our Institutional Strategic Plan, which stipulates the promotion of the English language among our students,” Vice President Kri said.

In April this year, our University’s Academic Vice Presidency, together with the Consejo Superior de Docencia (the consulting body to the Academic Vice Presidency) and the Educational Innovation Unit started implementing an English language B-Learning pilot program for students of the Faculty of Engineering in order to evaluate the system’s operation and extend its application to other undergraduate programs of Universidad de Santiago.

The B-Learning method combines on-line content delivery with face-to-face sessions. It was implemented with the support of our University’s Department of Linguistics and Literature for one thousand and fifty students during one semester.

After concluding this first evaluation stage, the results proved to be very positive; hence, the academic authority started promoting its implementation in all undergraduate programs, according to one of the goals of the Institutional Strategic Plan, which stipulates the promotion of the English language among the students.

On November 27th, the Academic Vice President, Fernanda Kri, had a meeting with the academic community to inform about the results of this first B-Learning experience. She described it as “successful”, both logistically and academically.

“We confirmed that students who participated in B-Learning lessons acquired and English language knowledge similar to the one acquired in one semester of face-to-face sessions,” she said.

Due to this positive evaluation, the Academic Vice President invited all undergraduate programs to be part of the initiative.

“The purpose of the meeting (held on November 27th) was to show these results to the different faculties, hoping that most of them will join in this project and include it formally in the programs’ curricula as of March 2014,” she said.

“We expect all students at the University reach at least an intermediate level of English and for that to happen, they need to take four consecutive English courses, lasting one semester each, as this is the only way of having continuity in learning,” she added.

Vice President Kri concluded by saying that, besides the good results, “Students showed themselves very motivated for using technological tools and for learning English early in their programs. All this gives us good expectations about the contribution that this project may be to our community once it is extended to all undergraduate programs and, in the future, to graduate programs.”
 
The details about a successful program

Ricardo Úbeda, professor at the Department of Linguistics and Literature, who is in charge of the program, informed that out of one thousand and fifty students who took the B-Learning course, 182 passed the initial diagnostic test and were exempt from the final test, while 744 students totally passed the course.

Another announcement was the implementation of more mechanisms to allow the interaction between students and teachers, like Skype, that can help to solve questions in a direct way.

“Finally, with this course, all our expectations were met and we were able to see the high level of commitment that the students of our University have with their integral learning process,” professor Úbeda stressed during the presentation of the results of this B-Learning system.

Translated by Marcela Contreras.

• A security specialist at Universidad de Santiago will be the only representative of Latin America in the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, which is made up of sixteen international experts on this matters.

Dr Lucía Dammert, a security specialist at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, will be part of the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Early in January 2017, Dr Dammert received an invitation extended by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon to become part of the Board.

The Board has the goal of debating and commenting on the UN decisions on nuclear disarmament, cyber-attacks  and small arms and light weapons control and it is made up of 16 experts from all over the world. Professor Dammert, a Peruvian security specialist, will be the only representative of Latin America.

“Most of the Board members are experts on this matter or renowned academics,” Dr Dammert says. They come from Australia, Croatia, Jordan, USA, Philippines, China, South Korea, Spain, France, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Ghana, Norway and Finland.

With regard to her participation, she says that she will contribute from the Latin American experience. “I expect to learn from the different realities in other parts of the world and, particularly, to identify topics which are not currently part of the security agenda in the country or Latin America,” she says.

The Board meets twice a year, in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, USA. “During these meetings, the Board reviews different issues on the disarmament agenda and debates on new global challenges,” she explains. After the meetings, the Board delivers a report with suggestions and recommendations to the UN Secretary-General.

Dr Dammert is a sociologist, PhD in Political Sciences and professor at the Bachelor’s Program in International Studies of the Faculty of Humanities, Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

She has a vast academic experience at universities in USA, Argentina and Chile. Her participation in the Board is not limited to a specific period, as it is an “open invitation in time,” she says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The benefit of using geophysical techniques to recover historical remains was one of the main conclusions of the “Taller de Geofísica aplicada al Patrimonio Críptico Heredado.” “By using mining technologies, we want to bring our country’s historical riches out of the depths of the Earth, without impacting the environment,” Dr Lucio Cañete, one of the organizers, said.

On July 02^nd, the closing ceremony of the third “Taller de Geofísica aplicada al Patrimonio Críptico Heredado” was held at the Conference Room of the Technological Faculty. The workshop was led by the Dean of that Faculty, Gumercindo Vilca Cáceres and was attended by several university authorities.

The workshop gathered together almost one hundred men and women of different ages and from different professional areas.

The workshop was given in the context of the outreach activities developed by the Technological Faculty. This is the reason why “We emphasized that the participants should not be part of the university community: to have an impact at a society level,” Dr Lucio Cañete explained.

The workshop

According to Dr Cañete, the purpose of the workshop was to give basic knowledge of geophysics and its potential applications to a general audience interested in the inherited cryptical material, “that is to say, a paleontological or archaeological resource that it is not visible, that remains under ground, covered by vegetation or ice.”

“We referred to gravimetry, seismology, magnetometry and electrical resistivity, which are used to prospect for mining resources. Chile is very rich in these resources,” the researcher said, regarding the techniques addressed during the workshop.

However, the team of experts led by Dr Lucio Cañete learned that these techniques could mean a significant contribution to a different type of excavation: the digs for the past.

“Chile has hidden riches that we want to reveal through these techniques: the riches of our past,” Dr Cañete said.

According to him, our territory is rich in archaeological elements; for this reason, we need the tools to unearth the past without altering the ecosystem.

“Historical research has shown that the first settlements in our territory started 13 thousand years ago. The first remains of human settlements in the American continent were confirmed in Chile,” he said.

“We have a whole rich past that must be revealed, but this must be done with techniques that will not impact the heritage while we are trying to bring it out,” Dr Cañete stressed.

Digging is a very intrusive method; therefore, if it is used, “The destruction of the evidence of the past is highly probable. However, geophysical techniques use disturbances that allow “seeing without touching,” he added.

Geophysical techniques

Gravimetry measures the variation of the strength of a gravitational field; magnetometry measures how a magnetic field changes; seismology, by means of man-caused little microseisms, allows to see what is under the surface, and, finally, the electrical resistivity measures the changes in ground resistance when introducing an electric current into the subsurface.

Regardless of the surface, the use of these techniques “Produce a sort of disturbance that does not affect the part of the patrimony that we want to know,” Dr Cañete said.

In this regard, the main goal of the workshop was to understand these techniques and see how their use in the mining industry can be a real contribution to surveying archaeological, historical and paleontological remains.

“We saw this and, and in our role as a public and state university, we called for the development of all these techniques that, although they are traditional in mining industry, could be used in a new scientific field: the field of the sciences that study the past,” he added

“By using these mining technologies, we want to bring our country’s historical riches out of the depths of the Earth, without impacting the environment,” Dr Cañete concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Professor Osvaldo García was invited to give a presentation on an organizational self-observation tool, called CLEHES©, to postdoctoral students of Takashi Ikegami Laboratory, an institution specialized in the field of artificial life, at University of Tokyo.

More than ten years ago, Osvaldo García, professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of Universidad de Santiago, started to develop CLEHES, a tool that intends the individual to generate learning, both at a personal level and at workl, through self-observation and the observation of interactions among human beings and their constituting networks, developing a diagnosis and an organizational design through Body, Language, Emotion, History, Eros and Silence (CLEHES©, its acronym in Spanish).

The contribution made by the course given by professor García, called Human Reengineering for Action (Rihpla, its acronym in Spanish), of the Department of Industrial Engineering, together with the academic prominence and prestige of CLEHES, made the publication of this innovative tool to be among the 100 most important international scientific publications in the field. In turn, it called the attention of different institutions that were interested in this emerging and effective technology.

For this reason, the professor Takashi Ikegami´s artificial life laboratory at the renowned University of Tokyo, in Japan, contacted professor García and invited him to give a presentation in September 2013 to graduate students at that Asian institution.

Professor García explained that, at Takashi Ikegami Laboratory, where the latest advances in robotics are being developed, they had a closed seminar for postdoctoral students and, besides, they explored the applications of CLEHES to the field of artificial life.”

“Students there made an effort to evaluate what changes could be made to apply some aspects of CLEHES´ structural dynamics to robot building,” García said. “We even talked about the possibility of generating a CLEHES-Robotics tool in collaboration with our University,” he added.

Professor García, an academic at Universidad de Santiago, stressed that, in Japan, robot building “is not approached through aggressive or merely recreational policies. It is considered a contribution to society, for example, to help senior citizens.” Therefore, the social self-observation tool CLEHES would be very useful.

Professor García showed himself satisfied with the new possibilities of internationalization and collaborative work with Japanese specialists opened by the research during the Rihpla course and CLEHES, and besides, he highlighted the concept of applied “ortho-discipline”, that is to say, to respect the autonomy of the different specialists involved in a collaborative project.

“In the Japanese culture, it takes time to establish collaborative relationships, but even so, we were able to forge significant links with them and also with the Japanese Embassy, where entrepreneurship and innovation are developing valuable bilateral ties,” professor García concluded.

CLEHES used by young researchers

Susana Gómez, who is doing her dissertation on diagnosis for her Master´s degree in Engineering Sciences using CLEHES technology, said that this innovative tool has been very useful to young students who pursue a specialization in management solutions.

“The networks created due to the international prominence of CLEHES have been amazing,” she said.

“This is a really new tool for management that is gaining strength and is being put into practice. Japanese specialists have the theoretical knowledge and the laboratories, but they have not put this technology into practice. Here in Chile, we have taken it to companies and schools and we have also applied it in our academic unit both in undergraduate and graduate students,” she said

For his part, Roberto Álvarez, a student who obtained his Master´s degree in Engineering Sciences by doing his dissertation using CLEHES to solve organizational problems said: “This management tool has been very helpful for my professional career and for working at big companies.”

“Besides, studying and applying this meta-discipline has helped us to open opportunities and to differentiate ourselves from other universities’ students,” he concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras