Shinji Kaneko, the Executive Vice President for Global Initiatives of Hiroshima University pointed out that Universidad de La Frontera is the first partner from Chile that joins their international network.

The Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) achieved a new international success by signing a Cooperation Agreement with Hiroshima University (HU), which is one of the most important universities in Japan.

With regard to this partnership, Shinji Kaneko, the Executive Vice President for Global Initiatives of Hiroshima University, explained: “We hope that this partnership will contribute to a good communication and understanding between Chile and Japan, and UFRO and HU. At the same time, we want to increase our presence in South America, where a significant future development is expected, as well as to promote the excellence in research, internationalization and the reputation of both universities.”

According to Dr. Lorena Vieli, the director of the International Affairs Office of UFRO, “although our countries have very different cultures, we have several challenges in common in the fields of professional training and scientific research. This agreement is a formalization of the already existing cooperation between both universities at the research level and will allow us to include other fields, too.”

PARTNERSHIP

The purpose of the recently signed agreement is to establish a cooperation in the fields of teaching, research, knowledge and culture dissemination, and to promote the academic and research exchange through projects of mutual interest. In particular, it will allow the exchange of researchers and teachers and joint research activities, as well as the participation in seminaries and academic meetings.

ACTIVE PARTNER

Hiroshima University was founded in 1949, in the first city in the world that was hit by an atomic bomb. Its mission is to contribute to the well-being of humanity, through the development of a democratic and peaceful society, based on the search for peace, the creation of new knowledge, the training of holistic human beings, the collaboration with the local, regional and international community, and continuous development.

In this context, the Japanese university seeks an active collaboration with UFRO through this agreement that includes, among others, specific matters, advice regarding the development of academic projects, special programs, and innovation and knowledge transfer.

BACKGROUNDS

The relation between establishments in Chile and Japan started more than a decade ago, through the active cooperation between Dr. Milko Jorquera and Dr. Fumito Maruyama, who are both graduates of Osaka University. They initiated a science project between Chile and Japan in 2017, about monitoring and understanding the dynamics of harmful algal blooms, a common phenomenon at the Chilean coastline that affects the public health and aquaculture production.

The Universidad de La Frontera participates as leading institution in a project that seeks to characterize the biological interactions that cause red tides, by studying its holobiome (holo = whole, biome = ecosystem). This is how Dr. Milko Jorquera, an academic of the Department of Chemical Sciences and Natural Resources at UFRO, who works together with the academics Dr. Fumito Maruyama and Dr. So Fujiyoshi, who both work at Hiroshima University (HU), describes it. The important partnership still exists, not only based on scientific collaboration, but also based on the support and coordination of graduate student exchange between UFRO and HU.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

“The signing of this agreement allows us to formalize the partnership between both universities, and to keep expanding our cooperation networks to countries and continents that we do not have such an active cooperation with, yet. That helps us to be a university that is connected with the global challenges and that gives its community the possibility to life an enriching and unique international experience,” added María Paz Collío, who is in charge of international agreements and projects at UFRO.