Dr. Luis Manuel Navas was pleasantly surprised by the work and the possibilities of cooperation between both universities.

Scientists of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) organized a seminar and invited Dr. Luis Manuel Navas, an academic of the University of Valladolid (UVa) in Spain, with the intention of strengthening the partnership and international scientific cooperation.

In order to display the options of joint research lines, the Research Center for Mycorrhizae and Agro-environmental Sustainability (CIMYSA) and the Center of Excellence in Biotechnological Research applied to the Environment (CIBAMA), both part of the Faculty of Engineering and Science of the UFRO, presented their work in the seminar, as well as the Recognized Research Group on Advanced Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development (GIR-TADRUS), which is coordinated by Dr. Navas at UVa.

This is the first time that the expert in agricultural engineering came to the UFRO and he was pleasantly surprised by the work and the possibilities of cooperation between these three centers. “This university made a real good impression on me regarding its work in the fields related to the ones we are working on. Sciences; agricultural, agroforestry and agri-food engineering, amongst others – these are the fields in which I guess that we could move forward together, for example in the development of R&D, which we are all interested in,” Dr. Navas pointed out.

Dr. Navas has been invited by Dr. Pablo Cornejo, the director of CIMYSA, and was able to learn about the different research initiatives of the UFRO, as well as to establish contact with academic researchers. His visit lasted five days and was part of the Erasmus+ Project KA107.

For the near future, the researcher of UVa envisions topics associated with the environment as a joint field of action. He explained: “In Chile, as well as in Spain, we are having the same situation, the same problems and environmental impact. Therefore, what unites us is the possibility to try find scientific and technological solutions to those problems together.”

It is worth mentioning that the alliance of these two centers of the UFRO Faculty of Engineering and Science with the Recognized Research Group on Advanced Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development is one of the dissemination activities of the project CONICYT/FONDAP/15130015, which is carried out by the Water Research Center for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM), and which the UFRO is a partner institution of.

Written by: Daphne Bormann Parada
Faculty of Engineering and Science