• The implementation of this new research instance was announced by the University’s President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, on December 3rd, during the launching of a Program for Institutional Improvement (PMI, in Spanish), funded by the Ministry of Education. The purpose of this new Information Technology Innovation Center for Social Applications (Citiaps, in Spanish) is to be an intermediary between research and its viability as software products that could be commercially developed, based on the premise of integrating innovation and science.

The PMI was created by this Corporation as a strategy to achieve world-class excellence in an innovative way, integrating three research areas to develop science- based innovation: Information technology, psychology and neuroscience. The University was awarded a grant from the Ministry of Education’s contestable fund to finance the program through a performance agreement.

“With this project we intend to improve our international competitiveness, increase the University’s scientific productivity in a significant way, and reach higher levels of teaching and scientific discoveries. All this will be done through the highly specialized and interdisciplinary research centers that we already have and through others that we are committed to create,” said President Zolezzi.

In the program’s launching ceremony, held on December 3rd in the University’s Salón de Honor, the University’s President said that the PMI will outline the future of applied research and that a significant share of this goal will lie on this new Information Technology Innovation Center for Social Applications.

Applied innovation for society

“The Citiaps will integrate the work done until now and it also considers the technological origins of this University and the great development of social sciences during the last years,” President Zolezzi said, emphasizing at the same time the center’s efforts to develop strategic partnerships among researchers, entrepreneurs and companies, doing a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary work.

“The PMI will strengthen the Vice Presidency of Investigation, Development and Innovation (Vridei, in Spanish) and to consolidate a technology transfer platform to do research in association with companies and to transfer and commercialize the R+D results,” the President added.

Oscar Bustos, Vice President of Investigation, Development and Innovation said that, although the Citiaps will be focused on three main areas (Information technology, psychology and neuroscience), its goal will be to cover all disciplines. “We want our students- who are very creative- to channel their ideas through the center, so that researchers develop these ideas and create products which are useful to society.”

“The idea is to generate innovation based on high-impact science. We have set ambitious but real goals,” the Vice President said.

Contributing to the country

Alberto Vásquez, Head of the Ministry of Education’s Higher Education Division, referred to the excellent assessment that the PMI had during the contest, which meant being granted the funds, and to the significance of contributing with new knowledge for Chile. “We would like to congratulate and support this initiative and say that for our country is good, important and relevant to award this performance agreement to Universidad de Santiago.”

John Fraser, American expert and professor at the Florida State University, who was a special guest at the ceremony, valued this interdisciplinary initiative from an international point of view saying that this was the best moment to invest in knowledge and to promote creativity, considering the economic success of the country.

Finally, Luis Magne, Head of the Vridei’s Technological Management Department awarded the winners of the First Patent Contest for Students: Roberto Santiago, from the Department of Chemical Engineering; Jaime Lagos and Álvaro Espejo, from the Department of Physics; Camila Manfredi, from the School of Architecture, and Loreto Acevedo, from the Department of Food Science and Technology.

Fernando Vial, Head of the Ministry of Education’s Institutional Financing Department; Mauricio Marín, PMI and Citiaps’ Scientific Director; Pablo Vera, Citiaps’ Deputy Scientific Director; Ramón Blasco, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering; Rafael Labarca, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Augusto Samaniego, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and other authorities, also attended the ceremony.

Translated by Marcela Contreras