The creation of an international research institute and the progress in consolidating the double graduation are part of the projections of joint work with KU Leuven.

The delegation of authorities from KU Leuven in Belgium had a busy timetable with different activities during their visit at the Universidad de La Frontera and the Araukanía Region, within the framework of the international agreement between both institutions.

On this occasion, the group consisted of Nadine Buys, dean of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, and the academics Bart Muys and Pol Coppin. Coppin is also an Honorary Professor at the UFRO Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Science. They had a series of meetings in order to get to know the advances and to monitor the cooperation activities of both institutions.

They met with authorities and academics of the Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Science, such as the dean, Rodolfo Pihán, and the vice dean, Adison Altamirano. The visit was based on the specific cooperation agreement this unit made with KU Leuven in 2009 and which had successful results that allowed to expand the partnership in 2017 through the elaboration of a broad cooperation agreement that also defines the double graduation for doctoral UFRO programs.

The agenda of the delegation included meetings with university and faculty authorities. At the same time, they had on-site activities. They visited a forestry company where students of KU Leuven, who are at the UFRO at the moment, are doing their practical training, and went on a tour to the Villarica National Park, considering that the Belgian students who come to the UFRO are specializing in different areas of the field of forestry.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

One of the planned activities was the meeting with researchers in different fields of the Scientific Technological UFRO Nuclei (BIOREN and Social Science & Humanities). And one of the planned joint projects in the field of science is the creation of an international research institute that considers the UFRO, KU Leuven (Belgium) and Macquarie University (Australia), and possibly an institution from Africa.

The planned institute, which would be located at the UFRO, would focus on global problems, approaching them from a multidisciplinary perspective, including Social Sciences, Engineering, Biological Sciences, etc. Dr. Adison Altamirano commented: “We want to do science which is globally relevant and possible to do from here, the Araukanía Region, a region that fulfills the necessary conditions.”

The representatives of the Belgian university appreciate the partnership they built with the UFRO and the exchange experiences for academics and students, besides the expectations regarding future collaborative actions.

According to Dr. Altamirano, one of these future projects is to advance in the consolidation of a double graduation that both institutions maintain and, particularly, in the case of the Doctoral Program in Agri-food Sciences and Environment. At the same time, he emphasized the link through the Erasmus Project that permitted two students of the Master´s Program in Natural Resource Management to do an internship at KU Leuven.