• The Red de Mentores network is made up of businessmen and executives with more than 10 years of experience, who will transfer their knowledge and experience to start-up companies incubated in this center, in order to give value added to their business.

On April 16th, Innovo Center of the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation of Universidad de Santiago presented an initiative called Red de Mentores (Mentoring Network). This network is made up of businessmen and executives with more than 10 years of experience who will transfer their knowledge and experience to start-up companies incubated in this center in order to give value added to their business.

They are professionals that voluntarily join this network to provide knowledge about areas such as marketing, sales, exportation, finances, accountability, administration, business strategies, production and distribution, human resources, regulatory issues, technologies, leadership, team and conflict management, among others.

“The idea is that the mentor will be able to give new points of view and foster new questions directly, as well as to expand the business vision of the mentee, who in turn will develop new abilities and acquire new knowledge to strengthen his/her new business,” Luis Lino, Director of Innovo Center, explains.

The process will benefit those start-up companies that show significant progress at a commercial level and need to incorporate new knowledge and join networks to boost their businesses.

“The initiative involves entrepreneurs who have companies and business projects based on science and technology, with at least one year in the incubation process, grouped together in areas like engineering sciences, food science, biotechnology and nanotechnology,” Lino adds.

The first gathering was held on April 16th, where 10 mentors and 6 incubated entrepreneurs had the possibility of meeting each other. After the meeting, the mentoring process will be initiated and it will last for six months. During that time, each mentor will work with one startup, transferring his/her know-how, vision, attitudes and competences.

“With this idea, we expect to benefit entrepreneurs with increased contact networks, professional advice, high level knowledge at no cost, acceleration of business growth, access to networks of potential investors, opportunities to implement ideas and plans, and feedback on professional and personal development areas, among others,” Innovo Center’s Director concludes.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The activity that was held at our University had the presence of Timothy Kane, the Australian Ambassador in Chile; Ian Satchwell, the Director of the International Mining for Development Centre of Australia; Dr. Aldo Saavedra, professor at the Department of Chemistry Engineering and other local experts, who analyzed the alternatives to develop mining extraction operations that care for both the environment and communities. During his speech, professor Satchwell said “We have learned many lessons from our mining experience in Australia that can be applied to the mining industry in Chile and Latin America; for example, the responsible water management, which should represent one of our main challenges”.

Chile and Australia are two of the major mining producers worldwide. Both countries have a vast experience in the mining extraction industry that can be shared with the aim of developing a sustainable mining industry that respects the environment and communities.

To face this challenge, on April 8th, our University held a panel discussion that was presented by the Australian Ambassador in Chile, Timothy Kane and had the presence of Ian Satchwell, Director of the International Mining for Development Centre of Australia; Isabel Marshall, Director of the Sustainability Committee of CESCO; Jorge Sanhueza, Manager of Environment and Communities of CODELCO; Matías Desmadryl, a lawyer expert in natural resources regulations, and Dr. Aldo Saavedra, professor at the Department of Chemistry Engineering of our University.

During the activity organized by the Australian Embassy in Chile and our Department of International and Inter-University Relations, Ambassador Kane valued the importance of this initiative and said that it was a “privilege” to have the opportunity of being at this international meeting “in one of the best educational institutions of Chile and, together with other experts, seek answers to common problems for both countries.”

This panel discussion- that took place at the Auditorium of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science- was also attended by professors and students of the Mining Engineering program of our University, who had the possibility of asking questions to the panelists.

During his speech, professor Ian Satchwell said “we have learned many lessons from our mining experience in Australia that can be applied to the mining industry in Chile and Latin America; for example, developing methods for responsible water management, which should represent one of our main challenges for the future of mining industry in the world.”

“Our main challenge is the responsible use of natural resources, understanding their real value. For example, the value that water has for people in our countries, as it is a very scarce good,” Stachwell said.

This panel discussion on the challenges faced by mining industry was held at Universidad de Santiago, in the context of CESCO Week, the World Copper Conference that took place in Santiago.

Academic partnerships

Carol Johnson, Head of the Department of International and Inter-University Relations of our University described the meeting as “successful” and informed that conversations tending to strengthen the academic links between Universidad de Santiago and Higher Education Institutions in Australia were started.

“Ambassador Ken met with President Zolezzi and expressed his interest in creating collaboration links regarding priority fields, like mining industry, exact sciences, engineering and international studies,” Johnson said.

She said that the activity “met the goals proposed and it indeed exceeded our expectations.”

“Through this activity, links were strengthened between Australia and our University. Also, it opened the possibility of having new meetings and bringing renowned foreign academics to address contingent matters of national interest, as sustainable mining industry, in this case. This debate is of interest to both our University and our country, which are important leaders in this field,” Carol Johnson concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr. Edmundo Leiva, professor at the Informatics Department of Universidad de Santiago and Jorge Segura, who is pursuing a Master´s Degree in this area, developed a software program that recognizes facial microexpressions that evidence basic emotions more effectively than the human eye does. The program can detect sadness, anger and rage - that are expressed through involuntary expressions - even when they last for less than a second. According to professor Leiva, it could have multiple applications: detecting criminals at airports, selecting and recruiting staff for key positions or helping in psychological virtual therapy on Internet.

Affective computing is a research field that relates to the interpretation of human emotions through technology. It looks like science fiction, but it is more real than it appears, and our University is making progress in this matter.

Dr. Edmundo Leiva, professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering of Universidad de Santiago, together with Jorge Segura, a student at the Master’s Program of that unit, developed a software program that can identify emotions by reading human facial expressions even when someone is trying to hide them.

By means of a camera that captures facial muscles movements, it is possible to identify microexpressions, even those lasting less than a second.

“When a person is trying to deceive someone, this program recognizes his/her facial microexpressions. Microexpressions are brief facial expressions shown according to the basic emotions experienced, like anger, happiness, sadness and disgust,” professor Leiva explained.

Professor Leiva - PhD in Informatics - said that although there are experts who study and get certified in interpreting emotions through the face, their estimation range is only 63%, while “our software program has exceeded 70%.”

“Very few people are able to detect microexpressions, because an evident anger expression could hide or mask sadness, what could show for half a second. This microexpressions detector can read that emotion in a fraction of a second,” he explained.

Apps
 
Professor Leiva explained that this innovative tool has a wide scope of applications, from supporting police work to detecting the truthfulness of data provided in recruitment and selection processes of staff for key positions.

“It could be useful for detecting terrorists at airports, or even for virtual therapy given by some psychologists through Internet and Skype. The therapist could have some indications if the patient is lying or, for example, in case of senior people, if they took their medication or not,” professor Leiva said, betting that the list of possibilities could be very long. He also thinks that in the future, it could become an application for mobile devices.

“We speculate that in the future, even Google Glasses (optical displays connected to Internet networks) could have a microexpression recognition device, so that everyone would be able to detect if a person is trying to hide an underlying emotion,” he stressed.

The psychology field that related to facial expression metrics was developed by the American psychologist Paul Ekman, who is a pioneer in detecting the facial expressions of seven basic emotions considered to be linked to the atavistic part of the brain. “Sadness, anger, happiness, fear, surprise, contempt and disgust, which are emotions that all human beings show as a species heritage and not as a trait of a particular culture,” professor Leiva concluded.

The Department of Informatics Engineering is planning to show its work in this line and other research lines to the University community through different stands displaying related technology. Professor Leiva will participate to show this interesting program to anyone who is interested in knowing better about this matter.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• According to Scopus database, the most cited article of Universidad de Santiago during 2012 belongs to Mario Inostroza, of the Department of Informatics Engineering, who is part of an interdisciplinary team of Australia that has provided findings related to different organisms’ genomes and has developed computational biology studies.

In 2012, Universidad de Santiago de Chile published 421 scientific articles, according to Scopus database. Out of these articles, the most cited one was the article written by Mario Inostroza, PhD, a researcher at the Department of Informatics Engineering, of the Faculty of Engineering. This result included 2012 and the record was closed on November 28th, 2013.

The work called “Genome-wide analysis of long noncoding RNA stability”, was published on the American journal Genome Research (Q1), and gives information about new findings regarding different organisms’ genomes and about computational biology studies, among others.

For the author, an expert in Computer Science, “being cited by the scientific community is recognition of the research work that I am doing. My goals are to continue working on this research line and to contribute, from Computer Science, to new areas of development.”

This work is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration work with research groups of Australia, where professor Inostroza contributed from his discipline. “My particular contribution has been from the world of Computer Science and the development of data analysis advanced tools,” Inostroza said.

The results show new evidence of how some DNA sequences work, that before were considered only as noncoding DNA. “Particularly, we found a stable behavior in a large group of these sequences, that shows that they may have an important role in complex metabolisms and different functions,” he explained.

For the academic, besides being a purely scientific contribution, this work is also important because it reflects the spirit of the Department of Informatics Engineering, where the knowledge of Computer Science is applied to different areas, collaborating with top-quality research groups.

Quality versus quantity

An issue that is constantly debated among the scientific community is that, when it comes to publishing articles, a researcher should favor quantity or quality. Regarding this, Dr. Inostroza said that an article goes under several proof procedures, what in turn results in a good-quality and good-level article.

First the researcher’s work is studied. He has to comply with all the steps demanded by scientific rigor. Then, the article undergoes a revision process by the corresponding journal or conference committee. In the end, the scientific community is the one that judges the article’s quality by citing it or using its results.

“During the last years, what has been mainly judged is the number of publications that a researcher has, acknowledging and considering the ones with a larger number of publications. The nature of the different research areas has long been discussed and the number of publications in each considerably varies. I believe that a differentiated acknowledgement policy according to the research area would positively contribute to improve the quality and the impact of the works presented,” Inostroza said.

Regarding to what the University should promote in this area, professor Inostroza has a clear opinion: “Together with encouraging teachers to do research and publish articles in high-impact journals, the University should strengthen collaborative work and the generation of networks with high-level international institutions and research groups. This will benefit not only the researcher. It will make possible the visit of renowned researchers and the exchange of undergraduate and graduate students.”

Finally, the academic suggested the need of protecting quality over quantity regarding the scientific production of the institution. “Nowadays, most of the University’s incentives are short-term (for example, number of publications in a year) and I don’t have information about long-term approaches. One example of this is the process called Evaluación de Antecedentes de Investigación (Research Background Evaluation) and the Asignación de Estímulo a la Excelencia en Investigación (Incentives for Excellence at Research), which consider the number of publications and not the impact that they have had.”

Translated by Marcela Contreras

The product, a particular type of rice, produced by a project of the Facultad Tecnológica in 2008, with the support of the Fundación para la Innovación Agrícola  (FIA), is in the process of obtaining its corresponding patent.

There was a high national and international impact in May 2008, because of this  new type of reconstituted rice obtained from by-products  of  the polishing process of this cereal, such as spikes, defective pieces, flour and others. The important finding is that it requires less time and only a quarter of water than the traditional rice usually used for cooking. It has also been developed with a variety of flavors, nutrients and fiber to make it competitive.

The leader of this project was Laura Almendares, researcher at the Department of Science and Food Technology, Facultad Tecnológica. She was supported by the Fundación para la Innovación Agrícola  and by  other researchers from the University and rice producers from Parral, in the Maule Region, and El Huique, in the O'Higgins Region.

Four years after this stage of research, Professor Almendares is now actively working in obtaining the corresponding patent for  her creation and in the generation of projects to achieve the commercialization of this innovative product.

In this context, the academic recently presented a paper in Brazil at the workshop "Potential and Qualities of Rice from the West Frontier area." This event brought together researchers, farmers and rice entrepreneurs from Santa Marta - where 80 percent of Brazil’s rice is produced- and   was organized by the Federal University of Pampa, with funding from the National Council for Scientific and National Development.

"With the support of Unipampa we generated contacts with businessmen with the aim of consolidating the business model of our rice, so that it can be produced industrially and enter the market" said the specialist Almendares on her visit to Brazil.

Efforts are also made in Chile. In this regard, this researcher of the Facultad Tecnológica explores different tools to market her product among consumers in a massive way, even at the Corfo level.

"It wasn’t easy because it’s unusual for a university to generate a patent for a product to be marketed (in a  massive way)", she said. However, she  recognizes that there is a large Chilean rice company interested in producing and distributing the rice created in the laboratories of our university. Thus, this kind of rice could be soon on Chilean and foreign supermarkets shelves.

• 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

• 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

• The Red de Mentores network is made up of businessmen and executives with more than 10 years of experience, who will transfer their knowledge and experience to start-up companies incubated in this center, in order to give value added to their business.

On April 16th, Innovo Center of the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation of Universidad de Santiago presented an initiative called Red de Mentores (Mentoring Network). This network is made up of businessmen and executives with more than 10 years of experience who will transfer their knowledge and experience to start-up companies incubated in this center in order to give value added to their business.

They are professionals that voluntarily join this network to provide knowledge about areas such as marketing, sales, exportation, finances, accountability, administration, business strategies, production and distribution, human resources, regulatory issues, technologies, leadership, team and conflict management, among others.

“The idea is that the mentor will be able to give new points of view and foster new questions directly, as well as to expand the business vision of the mentee, who in turn will develop new abilities and acquire new knowledge to strengthen his/her new business,” Luis Lino, Director of Innovo Center, explains.

The process will benefit those start-up companies that show significant progress at a commercial level and need to incorporate new knowledge and join networks to boost their businesses.

“The initiative involves entrepreneurs who have companies and business projects based on science and technology, with at least one year in the incubation process, grouped together in areas like engineering sciences, food science, biotechnology and nanotechnology,” Lino adds.

The first gathering was held on April 16th, where 10 mentors and 6 incubated entrepreneurs had the possibility of meeting each other. After the meeting, the mentoring process will be initiated and it will last for six months. During that time, each mentor will work with one startup, transferring his/her know-how, vision, attitudes and competences.

“With this idea, we expect to benefit entrepreneurs with increased contact networks, professional advice, high level knowledge at no cost, acceleration of business growth, access to networks of potential investors, opportunities to implement ideas and plans, and feedback on professional and personal development areas, among others,” Innovo Center’s Director concludes.

Translated by Marcela Contreras