• 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

• The projects supported by the Department of Agrarian Management of the Technological Faculty and the Food Science and Technology Research Center of Universidad de Santiago show important results, like a bio-pesticide based on residual quinoa grains or the potential edible use of this pseudo-cereal leaves.

The projects supported by the Department of Agrarian Management of the Technological Faculty and the Food Science and Technology Research Center of Universidad de Santiago (Cecta, in Spanish), show important progress in their goal of feeding the population in a healthy and equitable way.

The first project, “Biopesticidas en base a saponinas de quínoa” (Bio-pesticides based on quinoa saponins) (FIC 30343624-0) lasts three years and it is being developed in the O’Higgins Region, in Central Chile. It has the purpose of using the residual quinoa grains to generate a natural pesticide for grapevines.

The second project, “Valorización agroindustrial de subproductos de la quínoa” (Agro-industrial valuation of quinoa byproducts) (FIC 30429825-0), lasts three years and it is also being developed in the O’Higgins Region. The goal of this project is to promote the cultivation of quinoa, with new applications. Besides using the grains, they expect to promote the use of the leaves in salads.

The third project, “Habilitación de productores hortícolas de la región Metropolitana para la elaboración de productos IV gama” (Training vegetable producers of the Metropolitan Region in the elaboration of IV range products) (GORE BIP 30442786-0), lasts 18 months and it is the continuation of a project developed by the Cecta researchers in 2011 that tested different protocols to reduce the microbial load in vegetables like lettuces, cabbages and carrots.

Carlos Díaz Ramírez, Professor at the Department of Agrarian Management and Innovation Manager of the projects, explains that the purpose of this project is to train small farmers in the care and safety of all the production and supply chain of vegetables, until the products reach the consumer.

Some of the Cecta scientists involved in the projects are Professor Lina Yáñez Catalán, Dr Claudio Martínez and Dr José Luis Palacios Pino.

• The new therapy involves the development of a vaccine that provides the immune system with the tools needed to “attack” cancer cells, improving the antitumour response of the body. The therapy was announced to foreign media correspondents accredited in Chile.

• The study is funded through a Fondecyt Project and it is at preclinical stage. It considers a significant decrease of more than 70% in the overall cost of therapies for this disease.
• The leader of the project, Claudio Acuña, Dr in Biomedical Sciences, researcher, and Head of the Department of Biology of our University, gave us some details on this new technology, which is applying for a patent in USA with the support of Corfo.
• Dr Acuña said: “We are generating a quite effective therapy for cancer through which we could make immunotherapy more available to people. We are doing this in a university which is known for its social responsibility signature. In this context, I would like to highlight the talent of my students involved in this project.”

In order to optimize cancer therapy and contribute to public health in our country, an innovative and significant treatment developed at Universidad de Santiago has recently been presented.

This project involves the development of a vaccine that will allow destroying cancer cells in the body by enhancing its immune response.

This scientific development- funded by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, Fondecyt- considers a significant decrease of more than 70% in the overall costs of cancer therapies and it has shown an efficacy of 50%.

Dr Claudio Acuña, Head of the Department of Biology of Universidad de Santiago, is leading the project. “We want to have a vaccine available to protect us from the disease, just like in the vaccination process for measles and other diseases when we are children. In the case of cancer, our idea is to get people vaccinated so that they are able to eliminate cancer cell in their bodies, he said.”

Quality of life

According to the researcher, the project “Seeks to improve the quality of life of patients in the long term and generate a supplementary therapy to conventional treatments to resist cancer in a non-conventional way, which is currently treated with chemotherapy.”

“We have completed the preclinical stage (trials in living animals) which showed that the vaccine does protect from the disease. The next step is the clinical phase, in which it will be tested in human subjects. There was not any negative effect on animals, so we could extrapolate that there will be not any effect on patients,” he added.

“The ultimate goal is to generate a vaccine for people with cancer that will allow enhancing their immune response to tumours,” he said.

“We are generating a quite effective therapy for cancer in which we could make immunotherapy more available to people. We are doing this in a university which is known for its social responsibility signature. In this context, I would like to highlight the talent of my students involved in this project,” the scientist said.

“We were able to make it because the University enables, favours and promotes these innovation processes, besides providing the confidence to conduct high-level research,” he added.

Dicyt project

Dr Acuña’s meeting with foreign media correspondents was in the context of the activities of a Dicyt Public Opinion Project of Universidad de Santiago, led by Gabriela Martínez Cuevas, professor at the Department of Journalism.

Professor Martínez highlighted the interest of Fundación Imagen de Chile in contributing to promote the significance of this study among a group of accredited correspondents in Chile.

“Due to the strategic partnership that we developed with Fundación Imagen de Chile last year in a similar project, we have been able to arrange the first of a series of conferences with foreign accredited correspondents, during 2015,” professor Martínez said.

“This body has the purpose of managing the “nation branding”, so we have joined efforts to strengthen our “U de Santiago brand” around the world through our scientists,” she added.

Gabriela Martínez, who is also Director of the Communications Department and the institutional radio station said: “Today, the interest of the international press for learning about this study led by Dr Claudio Acuña was evident, and he insisted on the importance of the contribution made by the young researchers that he is training.”

She said: “There were correspondents of all the agencies in Europe, China and Latin America. We expect to see how they inform the world about this new contribution made by our state and public University, which is committed to the country progress and gives solutions to urgent demands beyond our borders. This was specifically demonstrated with this cancer vaccine.”

The project- which is at its preclinical stage- is based on effects of Polymixin B. It has already shown its first results in lymphoma, melanoma and breast, with an effectiveness of almost 50%. Besides, it is worth to mention that this technology could decrease the cost of current traditional cancer therapies by up to 70%.

With the support of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo, in Spanish), this technology is in the patenting process both in Chile and USA, to then continue to the clinical stage and to exporting the treatment.

Fundación Imagen de Chile

According to its web page, Fundación Imagen de Chile is an autonomous institution funded by public resources, created in 2009, with the purpose of coordinating and organizing the efforts to promote the image of Chile abroad.

Its responsibility is to mange the “nation branding”, by coordinating the work of the main sectors that contribute to build this image, such as culture, sports, exportations, investments, tourism and international relations, among others. For this purpose, the foundation develops strategic partnerships with public and private agents to coordinate the image of the country and actively position the distinctive features of our identity.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• In recognition of his extensive career in the area of electrochemistry, Dr. José Zagal, professor at the Department of Chemistry of Materials, was invited to be part of the editorial board of Electrochemistry Communications, an international journal with the higher impact index in its field.

Dr. José Zagal, professor at the Department of Chemistry of Materials of our university, was selected to be part of the editorial board of Electrochemistry Communications, the renowned scientific journal partnered with Elsevier that has the higher impact index in the field of electrochemistry.

In a conversation with UdeSantiago al Día, the academic said that he understood his inclusion in the board as “recognition of my work over many years; but most important, the recognition of a work that has mainly been done by a team.”

Professor Zagal has a vast experience in the scientific research field, particularly in the study of oxygen and reactivity. He started to work at Universidad de Santiago 40 years ago and he has kept on publishing specialized articles in his field of interest since then.

Besides, he has been part of editorial boards of different scientific journals, like the International Journal of Electrochemistry of Hindawi Publishing Corporation, since 2011 and the International Journal of Biotechnology & Biochemistry (IJBB), since 2012.

Zagal said that it is very important that both students and academics produce publications in their fields and get involved in different creative processes “to contribute not only to this University’s development but to all the country.”

“I think that it is necessary that students in any program should take part in creative and practical processes, that is to say, they should get involved in laboratory work since their first years at the university, so that they produce new knowledge that can reach most of the people through renowned publications,” he said.

“Publishing research results is essential. When you make public the work you do, your work becomes recognized in that field and, at the same time, you spread new knowledge,” he added.

For this reason, professor Zagal expects that his role at the Electrochemistry Communications’ editorial board means a contribution to the promotion of sciences and to the better positioning of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

“You stay at this university because you love it and not for the money. Many researchers here might well be working at private sector companies, but they stay here because they feel a real bond with this institution,” he said.

“For the love that I have for this University, I expect that my inclusion in the editorial board will benefit the institution and will contribute to spread knowledge among society,” Dr. Zagal concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr Leonor Huerta, physics engineer, Master’s in Astronomy and professor at Universidad de Santiago, says that the discovery of a new solar system with Earth-like planets should promote the creation of more research centers and the generation of more resources to take advantage of the astronomical potential of our country.

Scientists at the NASA informed about the discovery of a new solar system with seven exoplanets similar to the Earth in size and temperature. The system, Trappist-1, is about 40 light years from Earth and it contains three planets that are likely to be habitable, as their weather conditions would allow liquid water, and maybe, life. The telescopes in La Silla and Paranal observatories, both located in the north of Chile, took part in the discovery. 

Dr Leonor Huerta, physics engineer, Master’s in Astronomy and professor at Universidad de Santiago, said: “We need more astronomy and research centers to incorporate all the human capital generated in Chile. We have facilities available at no charge, as large foreign conglomerates have built telescopes in Chile for the quality of its night sky in the north.”

“We need more Chilean scientists to work on this, not only astronomers. If we are going to search for life in the universe, we also need astrobiologists and geologists,” she explained.

“Observatories also require “Hydraulic engineers and computer scientists, for example, to take care of the infrastructure. This is a multidisciplinary field. To explore the universe and to study the evolution of life, we will need a very strong multidisciplinary collaboration,” she added.

“From a scientific point of view, this finding is very interesting because there are three planets which are likely to have water somewhere on their surface in its three states: solid, liquid and gas.”

With regard to the next stage after this finding, she said: “Clearly, the next step is to know if these planets have atmospheres. This will happen when the next exoplanet program mission of the NASA is carried out.”

Although she recognizes that it is very likely that there is other life in universe, there is not any empirical evidence. “For a scientist- astronomer or biologist- it is very difficult to affirm that the conditions of our solar system are unique,” she says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras