• Five innovative projects led by students at Universidad de Santiago provide answers to different problems in the areas of health, earthquake engineering, environment protection and food. Now these projects will be developed at the Stanford Research Institute, USA, where the students will travel for an internship period.

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The Despega Usach contest is an initiative led by the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation of Universidad de Santiago de Chile with the purpose of promoting a science-and-technology-basedentrepreneurial culture among graduate and undergraduate students at Universidad de Santiago.

Dr Claudio Martínez Fernández, Vice President of Research, Development and Innovation said, “Our students are very talented and many times, all what they learned while they studied, remains on paper only; however, through this initiative, we have invited them to have an active role in the search of solutions to problems that affect people and the productive sector.”

According to Dr Martínez, the University’s responsibility is not only to guarantee the good academic quality of curricula, but also to give the students the tools they require at an international context. “We think that, in this way, we can bring research closer to society, as this allows them to understand science from daily life,” he said.

For her part, Dr Karina Arias Yurisch, Vice President of Outreach and Engagement, highlighted that by means of this initiative and other institutional programs, “we contribute a little to the Government’s Productivity, Innovation and Development Agenda, making a series of commitments to the development of our country and society.”

In her opinion, the five winning projects deserve to be at this stage of the contest. Now, the Stanford Research Institute “will provide them with a series of additional tools to turn them into real entrepreneurs with the ability of placing their initiatives in the market.”

Winning projects

One of the winning projects is an answer to the natural features of our country as a highly seismic territory. The application is a seismic alert and it has the purpose of warning people in case of an earthquake, so that they can protect themselves. The project was developed by Ariel Césped and Javier Césped, both students at the Faculty of Engineering.

Two of the winning projects are related to health care. One of them, Homexam, is an application for smartphones that allows keeping records of the cardiac status of the mother and the baby in order to improve the follow up of gestational diseases in real time. It was developed by José Ignacio Cárdenas Lattus, Jean Pierre Lattus Sanhueza, Patricio Rodríguez Videla and Roberto Brito Álvarez.

The other is a vaccine based on nanoparticles of a natural polymer that can contribute to cancer treatment in domestic animals. This proposal was developed by Claudio Acuña-Castillo, Claudia Robles Planells and Giselle Sánchez Guerrero.

In the area of food, Bárbara León and Paulina Esponda propose a vegetal sausage with a high nutritional value based on native seeds and legumes as an alternative to animal-based products.

Finally, the Company Ecoliner, led by Daphne Moreno, Camila Pereira and Antonio Quilaqueo, presented a sustainable water repellent spray based on recycled silicone from liner rolls.

During the award ceremony, the Assistant Manager of Early Funding of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO, in Spanish), Tadashi Takaoka, gave a presentation in which he explained the key factors to get funds for startups.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Cristian Lara and Alonso Martínez, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, created Reciclapp, an application for mobile phones that allows everyone to recycle from his/her own house.

A year ago, Cristian Lara (23) and Alonso Martínez (23), both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago, gave a presentation at an international meeting of innovation and technology entrepreneurs (known as hackathons) about the project that they had been working on: an application for mobile devices to promote recycling and contribute to environmental care.

And this how the story of Reciclapp started: and innovative initiative that outpaced its competitors and allowed the two friends to access the Santiago Innova business incubator.

According to the Chilean Ministry of the Environment, the country generates almost 17 million metric tons of waste solids a year, and 6.5 million of them come from households, but only 10% is recycled. Cristian Lara highlights that by using Reciclapp, anyone can inform from his/her own house about the material they will give to the recycling-material collectors.

“For example, you can inform about plastic or glass bottles, cans, cardboard boxes and paper that you plan to discard and the date and time when this material can be collected. We prepare a map and a schedule with all the information, we send it to the collectors and they organize their roadmaps,” he says.

Work placement abroad

After winning the hackathon, Lara and Martínez faced new challenges to raise funds and continued quickly positioning Reciclapp.

In November 2015, they presented their project in fiiS, the largest social innovation international festival in the country, and a month later, they became the first Universidad de Santiago students in winning the largest entrepreneurship contest for university students in Chile and Latin America: Jump Chile.

The prize they were awarded included a work placement abroad, in Bolivia. Once in that country, they implemented pilot schemes in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, El Alto y La Paz. “We were warmly welcomed; we met with some Bolivian Ministers and we managed to establish the company there,” he says. 

Later, new members joined the work team: Ian Bofill and Christian Torreblanca, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program; Bárbara Urrutia, a student at the Business Engineering program; Manuel Fonseca, a student at the Industrial Engineering program of Universidad de Chile, and Efraín Rebolledo, a computer engineer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and current programmer at Microsoft.

Back in Santiago, they entered the Start-Up Chile acceleration program, which allowed them to raise 25 million pesos and gave them the possibility of participating in the program.

Early in August, they won another victory during the GeekCamp, an activity that gathers together investors and mentors from all over the world, particularly from Silicon Valley.

This allowed them to raise at least 60 million pesos and they also received two special awards for the best pitch and the best business model. Now, they are planning to travel in Latin America and the United States by the end of this year.

Besides, the project will be one of the first Chilean entrepreneurships included in the Facebook Messenger application. For now, it is only available for Android OS.

“Our recycler’s data base is larger than the one of the Ministry of the Environment; they are more than 250, in 35 different cities in Chile and we are very close to them. In Bolivia, we are working with more than 400 recyclers. We are planning to add more cities in Chile and Bolivia next year and we also expect to be operating in Colombia, Mexico and the United States, in California.

University support

Cristian Lara says that, without the support of Universidad de Santiago, the project would not have been successful. He highlights the support given by the Industrial Engineering Department (DIIND, in Spanish), particularly by director Miguel Alfaro Marchant and professors Juan Sepúlveda Salas and Marcela Rosinelli Contreras.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Varua Touch is a wireless touch device that allows to move a cursor on a computer screen, tablet or smartphone by moving the hands, feet or as best suitable for each user.

In a couple of weeks, Álvaro Monserrat Aguirre, a student at the Electrical Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago de Chile will present his degree examination. In his thesis project, he has been working on designing the prototype of a device for people with mild motor impairment. “I have always liked the mix of disciplines, like engineering and health care; for this reason, my idea is to develop a universal product for disabled people,” Álvaro Monserrat says, regarding the Varua Touch, a wireless touch device that allows to move a cursor on a computer screen, tablet or smartphone by moving the hands, feet or as best suitable for each user.

In 2011, Álvaro Monserrat entered Universidad de Santiago de Chile and two years later, his inquisitiveness led him to become part of “Open Cree” a group of engineering students for project development.

In 2015, a new opportunity was offered to him by the first version of the Despega USACH contest. He already had an idea to apply for the contest: the “Nurse Eye” project. This initiative arose from the need that he and a kinesiologist friend detected in a hospital. “By using digital cameras, we captured photos of people´s injuries in order to monitor their evolution, considering different variables,” he explains. 

The Director of the Chilean National Institute of Injuries invited them to the institute and gave them the possibility of working with patients and equipment to develop their idea. “It was a commercial validation,” Álvaro says. As his project was one of the five that won the Despega Usach contest, he had the opportunity of travelling to San Francisco, USA, and work at the Stanford Research Institute for two weeks.

“Technological innovation means to create something new using existing resources in order to benefit someone,” he explains. “It is a creative process beyond technical knowledge, with a mixture of inspiration, paying attention to problems, seeking solutions and being inquisitive.”

Sustainable social venture

Together with a multidisciplinary team of students, they began to visit people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. “We made both a medical and technical evaluation and helped them to install the application in their cell phones. The app allowed them to write, push a key and communicate their needs,” he remembers. The idea for his thesis project arose from this experience.

“The Varua Touch should be accompanied by a medical evaluation conducted by a kinesiologist or a speech therapist who can detect the communication needs of each patient,” he explains. He highlights that the device offers the possibility of setting its level of sensitivity. “In some cases, getting closer to the sensor would be enough to move the cursor, to click or select a letter,” he adds.

“My idea is to develop a universal product for disabled people as a sustainable social venture, because in our country, disability does not mix with technology. There are many challenges, but more resources are required,” he says. My goal is to help a specific segment of society, by improving their quality of life,” he concludes.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The contest organized by the Ministry of Energy seeks to generate efficient solutions for households and neighborhoods and improve the access and use of renewable energies in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Dr Juan Manuel Zolezzi, President of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, will be part of the contest jury.

The “Impacta Energía” contest, organized by the Chilean Ministry of Energy and supported by the Laboratorio de Gobierno, seeks to generate innovations in the field of energy by attracting and encouraging talented entrepreneurs and innovators, and inviting them to get involved in the public challenges of the country with ideas, technologies, products or services.

“Impacta Energía” is an open contest for public innovation that seeks to find efficient energy solutions for households and neighborhoods and improve the access and use of renewable energies in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to enhance their productivity.

The call includes a Bootcamp stage or accelerated incubation process, where the selected teams will have the possibility of co-creating, improving and modifying their projects with the mentoring of representatives of the Government and the support of real users.

The four winners- who will be announced in November this year- will receive 75 million pesos each for piloting their ideas. They will have six months to implement their projects and will have the support of the Ministry of Energy in order that their ideas can become public policies.

Applications can be submitted in the link www.impactaenergia.cl, until August 23^rd. Both Chilean and foreign applicants can participate, as well as small, medium and large-sized companies from Chile or abroad.

Partnership between universities and companies

As one of the 16 members of the jury that will select the winning projects, Dr Juan Manuel Zolezzi, President of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, highlighted that innovation is an essential matter in this public and state university. 

He invited “students and young people in general to face these problems and propose ideas to progress in this challenge.”

For his part, Máximo Pacheco, Minister of Energy, said that he was proud to have President Zolezzi in the jury and also of the relation with Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Asimismo, destacó la relación entre la academia, el Estado, la sociedad civil y el mundo empresarial para trabajar en conjunto y enfrentar los desafíos en el ámbito de la energía. “Tenemos la convicción de que la energía no es solamente algo estratégico, sino que es a partir de ella que se construyen las civilizaciones”, expresó el ministro.

He also stressed the importance of the relation among the State, universities, civil society and business world as partners to face energy challenges. “We are certain that energy is not only a strategic issue: it is the base on which civilizations are built,” the Minister said.

“Companies need to work in partnership with universities like Universidad de Santiago de Chile,” he concluded, insisting on the importance of committing to innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project organized a contest in which 21 academics were selected to visit foreign institutions focused on innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago and the International Partnerships Program of the Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project organized a contest to select academics who will visit renowned foreign universities with the purpose of consolidating, broadening and building links between the faculty and those institutions.

Another goal of these academic missions will be to boost the development of exchange mechanisms and/or programs for academics and researchers who will contribute in turn to promote student exchange both at an undergraduate and graduate level.

According to Jack Brady, assistant director of the International Partnerships Program of the project, “these missions will result in agreements that will connect Universidad de Santiago with world-class universities. This will directly contribute to the goals of the project in terms of undergraduate and graduate students exchange and collaboration in different areas.”

Many academics of the faculty have already contacted different universities which focus is innovation. They will have the mission of “bringing Fab Lab models that we can adapt to our faculty and facilitate the development technology-based graduate programs,” Brady said.

The activity was led by the dean of the faculty, Juan Carlos Espinoza, and the co-director of the Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project, Dr Mario López. On the occasion, the academics signed the missions’ commitments.

Some of the universities that the 21 academics will visit are: Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau (France), Università di Bologna (Italy), Università di Torino (Italy), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Politécnico di Milano (Italy), Universidad de Navarra (Spain), University of Washington (USA), Stanford University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Ecole Polytechnique (France), Université de Lorraine (France), Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (Spain), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain) and others.

These missions will allow building a direct relationship with institutions that can generate networks to contribute to the development of the Observatory for University Internationalization and will help to identify strategies to become part of university international networks and innovation and entrepreneurship centers. 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The five winners of the first version of the Despega USACH contest organized by the Department of Technology Management had an intense work period at the Stanford Research Institute International (SRI), in Menlo Park, California, USA. The purpose of this contest is to promote science- and-technology-based innovation among students at Universidad de Santiago.

The five winners of the first version of the Despega USACH contest organized by the Department of Technology Management, had an intense work period at the Stanford Research Institute International (SRI), in Menlo Park, California, USA. The purpose of this contest is to promote science-and-technology-based innovation among students at Universidad de Santiago

The group was made up of Sofía Michelson, a biochemist who is working on the development of an ointment to combat melanoma; Dr Daniela Toro Ascuy, who is in charge of the platform for the development of vaccines for the salmon farming industry; Pablo González Alarcón, leader of Class Track, a curriculum management software; Sebastián Sanhueza Tapia, representative of Crea en 3D, a company for 3D parts and design, and Álvaro Monserrat, representative of NurseEye, a clinical instrument to assess and measure wound surface areas.

All members of the group agreed that their experience at Silicon Valley, the world’s land of entrepreneurship, was “an incredible experience” where they learned to come up with ideas, create a company, look for investors and sell a product, allowing them to strengthen their ventures and market their products.

High level students

Phillip Whalen and Robert Schoettle, both with large experience in innovation programs to transform original ideas into successful solutions were in charge of the internship.

According to Robert Schoettle, the team of Universidad de Santiago had been well prepared for the program before arriving in Silicon Valley. “All the teams were able to discover important things to expand their understanding of the world market opportunities,” he said.

“This information significantly changes the business approach of many teams and, in all cases, they said that they would not have been able to get the information in Chile or it would have taken them longer,” he added.

He also highlights the importance of this experience at the world’s capital of entrepreneurship, a transforming opportunity for Chilean youngsters.

“Understanding how business owners think and act will allow innovation to flourish among new generations. World economy is becoming really global and Chilean people have the chance of thinking beyond their own country’s boundaries to produce a big and significant impact on global markets,” Schoettle explained.

After our students’ stay at the SRI, Robert Schoettle says that he thinks that Chilean business people and the ideas coming from our country are exceptional and provide examples of how early knowledge of  marketing activities can be useful. “All this knowledge can be used both immediately and in the future, in the flourishing Chilean business ecosystem,” he said.

Despega Usach 2016                                       

The winners of the first version of the contest call on their classmates to participate in the next Despega USACH 2016, for they can learn about innovation and entrepreneurship besides meeting students who are working similarly at the university.

Soon, the Department of Technology Management of the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation will be informing about the contest.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

·         The amount awarded will be supplemented by institutional funds, through the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation. This will allow the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology to renovate and acquire new equipment for the important research work that they develop.

Universidad de Santiago was awarded 571 million 528 thousand Chilean pesos in the IV Scientific and Technology Equipment Fund (Fondequip) Grant Contest. Fondequip is a program led by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt).

The funds will benefit different research projects.

Dr Raúl Cordero, professor at the Department of Physics of Universidad de Santiago is leading the project “Characterization of Clouds in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Southern Ocean” that seeks to better understand the interrelation between clouds and polar climate.

“Through interactions with short wave and long wave radiation, clouds significantly impact the energy balance, contributing to warming (or cooling) the Earth surface. The clouds are the biggest source of uncertainty in global climate models and affect the forecast of future climate scenarios,” the researcher said.

Therefore, in a context of climate change, “a better understanding of the clouds over the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic Peninsula is urgent,” the researcher said.

Thanks to the funds awarded, Dr Cordero will be able to acquire a Micro Pulse LIDAR (MPL), a high- tech remote sensing laser system that provides constant and independent follow-up of clouds profiles and properties. The equipment will be assembled on Universidad de Santiago’s Research Platform (62º 12’ S; 58º 57’ W), on San Jorge Island, located in the Austral Ocean, to the north of the Antarctica Peninsula.

To guarantee the access and dissemination of the measurements and data generated by the new equipment, it will be connected to the NASA’s “Micro Pulse Lidar Network” (MPLNET).

Confocal microscope

The Faculty of Chemistry and Biology was also granted funds for two projects. One of them is led by Dr Claudio Acuña Castillo, head of the Department of Biology. According to the researcher, they seek to “renovate the confocal microscope to keep our competitiveness and increase the number of papers published by the areas of Biology and Biomedicine.”

The third initiative that received funding was the project for updating and acquiring new accessories for a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer that will strengthen different research areas in chemistry. Dr Juan Guerrero of the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology is leading this project.

Impact of new equipment

According to Dr Raúl Cordero, “by means of the acquisition of cutting edge technology, this contest allows Chile to strengthen the scientific instrumentation of the Universidad de Santiago’s Antarctic Platform and contributes to training advanced human capital, at an undergraduate and graduate levels, with an specialization both in the polar atmosphere and climate change.”

For his part, Dr Acuña says that having this type of funds available allow us to have the leading-edge equipment required to generate competitive research.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr. Sergio Velastín, professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, gave a talk on the use of data fusion in computer vision at the 17th Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), held at Salamanca, Spain. Around 400 officials from the Ministries of Defense of different countries and members of the NATO attended the conference.

International experts on data management gathered last week in Salamanca, Spain, at the 17th version of the International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2014) supported by the IEEE. Universidad the Santiago de Chile was represented by Dr. Sergio Velastín, full professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering, who gave a presentation during the activity.

He gave his presentation “The potential of fusion in computer vision application” to more than 400 people, many of them members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and representatives of Ministries of Defense of different countries, who attended the conference to learn about the progress in this field.

Dr. Velastín talked about computer vision, the branch of artificial intelligence that is concerned with finding artificial means to interpret the visual information of the surrounding world. Human beings have specialized in this interpretation and use a significant part of their brains to do it. “Most of what we do every day (getting around, driving, interacting with others, enjoying sports, teaching our children, learning, reading information, among others) requires interpreting what we see. If machines were able to emulate these abilities, we could potentially enrich our lives and empower mentally or motor- handicapped people. We could also make our public spaces safer,” the academic said.

Data processing in the digital era

According to the researcher, more than 40 years ago, a revolution started in human development that would potentially transform what up to then were physical quantities (images, printed letters, vital signs like blood pressure, sounds, among others) into digital data (numbers) that could be processed by a computer. “This digital era in which we live has surrounded us to such a degree that we almost do not realize how extended the generation, transmission and processing of data are. A routine telephone call occurs thanks to the processing of these numbers. Everything can be more easily filed and humankind is generating more data than ever in its existence,” professor Velastín said.

The academic explained that although many technologies- like data fusion- initially arose due to military needs, especially during the Cold War, “the use of this data involves large potential benefits, but they undoubtedly depend on how societies and governments use it. Europe, with a more egalitarian and socially inclusive model, is achieving great progress benefiting people, for example, through the so-called intelligent cities and environmentally assisted life.”

Professor Velastín thinks that in societies with more individualistic models, like Chile or even the United States, benefits could turn into danger, mainly because these contributions are not well distributed and are not used for social inclusion. “How many municipal schools do usually use tablets or smart boards?” The risk posed by disparity in the access to technology increases inequality, particularly, in future generations,” he said.

Security cameras

At present, Dr. Velastín is conducting a study in London on people’s behavior on public transportation, by recording and interpreting digital images captured by security cameras. In his opinion, the use of cameras in public spaces is a complex issue that depends on the balance between the right to security and the right to privacy. “In an ideal society, nobody is arrested at random unless he/she is a suspect or has put other people’s security at risk. What is important is to have clear regulations that are transparently respected by everyone who is responsible for a security camera, both in the government and in the private sector.

Professor Velastín has worked for several years in the United Kingdom, the country with more cameras per capita in the world, but also with very strong regulations for protecting data. He went to Spain in the context of a visiting professorship at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, through its Chairs of Excellence program, funded by Banco Santander.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr. Gonzalo Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation at the Computational Intelligence Society, which is part of the world’s largest professional and technical association in this field. Also, professor Acuña became Chile’s representative at the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society.

An academic of Universidad de Santiago’s Department of Informatics Engineering, Dr. Gonzalo Acuña Leiva, will preside for two years the Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chile Chapter, which is part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional and technical association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.

Dr. Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation of the IEEE-CIS, one of the world´s most renowned and traditional organizations, as it was the first organization founded in this field after the American chapters of computational intelligence and is made up of, at least, sixty academic members from different universities.

“Computational Intelligence relates to the ability developed by computers, for example, to imitate nature or biological processes,” Dr. Acuña says, pointing out that this field includes neural networks and genetic algorithms inspired by biological processes or the animal world, like the ants’ methods to solve problems or the flight of birds.

Although the IC concept seems to be related to Informatics, Dr. Acuña says that it has to do with dynamical systems and mathematical models and not necessarily with programming.

Computational Intelligence is not Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Acuña says that the concept of Computational Intelligence should not be taken for Artificial Intelligence, as the former refers to “mathematically modeled ideas that help to solve optimization problems and other engineering works. It refers to mathematical tools that are commonly used by computer programmers to solve different problems, as they can be applied to all imaginable fields.”

Dr. Acuña has been working in this field for several years and he has specialized in the study of neural networks, interconnection systems inspired by the animal nervous system functioning and SVM (Support Vector Machines), a group of supervised learning algorithms that can be applied to different areas.

At present, the academic is leading a Fondef project where he is applying this knowledge to mining industry.

“With this Computational Intelligence tools we are building predictive models for the availability of physical assets in mining industry, like shovels, large trucks or the enormous equipment required for mining operations that involve high maintenance costs. Therefore, if we are able to anticipate the equipment availability, mining industry can improve preventive maintenance and reduce costs,” Dr. Acuña explains.

Youngsters and Latin America

About his recent nomination as president of the IEEE-CIS Chile Chapter, Dr. Acuña says that the efforts are oriented to promote the Chapter and to motivate young people through CI Summer Schools, which are “the ideal opportunity for students preparing their dissertation work to participate, as leading figures in this field give presentations and many of our members offer tutorial sessions. It is the occasion when we meet as a community.”

Finally, there is also news about this field at a regional level, as two weeks ago, in a congress held at Bariloche, the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society was founded, where Dr. Acuña and an investigator from Universidad de la Frontera were appointed national representatives.


Translated by Marcela Contreras
 

• Dr. María José Galotto, director of Universidad de Santiago’s Packaging Laboratory, was appointed as the National Contact Point for Horizon 2020 Framework Program in the area of nanotechnology. Horizon 2020 is a European program that provides funding for research and innovation in different fields. “This is in recognition of the University’s positioning in the area of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, reached through CEDENNA,” the researcher said.

The National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt, in Spanish) informed that Dr. María José Galotto, director of Universidad de Santiago’s Packaging Laboratory (Laben, in Spanish) was appointed National Contact Point for the Horizon 2020 Framework Program in the area of “Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing.”

Dr. Galotto said that her appointment “is in recognition of the University’s positioning in the area of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, reached through the Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CEDENNA, in Spanish), where nanotechnology is being applied to different areas of knowledge. This appointment will consolidate this new line of research and this positioning.”

According to Dr. Galotto, it is also in recognition of the constant work that Laben has developed over time, which results have been reflected in several research projects, publications in ISI journals and patents. This, in turn, results in a very close relation with the food and agricultural industry and food packaging industry at a national and international level.

The Laben was invited to be part of the International Association of Packaging Research Institutes (IAPRI). This membership, awarded by invitation only, is proof of the international recognition that our University has received.

Dr. Galotto’s appointment is also important because this area has a great future in the Food Science and Technology field; therefore, being able to get in contact with other research groups in Chile and abroad, will strengthen the links between the University’s academics and other researchers.

Among her new responsibilities, she will have to promote and foster the participation of nanotechnology research groups in the Horizon 2020 Framework Program, in which Chile will be entitled the same benefits that the European Union member states enjoy.

Regarding this, Dr. Galotto said that “up to date, we have had the first work meeting at Conicyt and we have scheduled others for the second semester, both here in Chile and in Europe.”

Nanotechnology

According to the researcher, “nanotechnology will integrate with food and agricultural industry as an option for developing food with better sensory and nutritional properties, better quality, and useful life, and greater safety.”

Dr. Galotto specified that our University is well ahead in this area, since the Laben has been working several years in applying nanotechnology to food packaging.

She added that researchers at Laben have led studies, in which nanotechnology has been applied, for example, to the development of packaging with anti-microbial activity to extend the life of food like salmon, or to reducing the level of compounds that accelerate the ripening of climacteric fruits like kiwi or avocado, among others.

Translated by Marcela Contreras