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.
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
