• The study will last three years and it will develop computational tools to optimize the equipment and processes in which energy is transferred by fluids using numerical simulation.

According to Dean Juan Carlos Espinoza, it is essential “to understand that Engineering projects not only generate wealth but a series of impacts that can affect the well-being of the population either positively or negatively.”

The Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago celebrated its 100th anniversary with a ceremony at the Salón de Honor Hall. The anniversary coincides with a moment when the faculty has set itself the primary goal of becoming one of the 50 best faculties in this field at an international level. 

The Faculty has the mission of contributing to the development of the country through the comprehensive training of Engineers in different specialties, including research in the areas of scientific and technological innovation. For this purpose, today the Faculty includes nine Departments: Electricity, Geography, Industries, Informatics, Mechanics, Metallurgy, Mining, Civil Works and Chemistry.

Currently, the Faculty has 12,360 undergraduate students, 150 full time teachers, 20 daytime programs and 19 evening programs, plus 17 Master’s programs, 5 doctoral programs and 20 postgraduate courses. “We have to adapt ourselves to the challenges that the country and Engineering development pose,” Dean Espinoza said.

One of the initiatives of the Faculty that is focused on the industrial development needs of the country is the project Nueva Ingeniería 2030, led by Dr Jorge Bravo Chacón. This initiative was launched in August, 2014, in order to train world-class engineers who are also able to change the productivity matrix in Chile.

“The Faculty of Engineering has contributed to the industrial development of the country through innovation,” Dean Espinoza said. “That means to create new products or generate improvements in a proactive process, with an important impact on peoples’ quality of life.

For this reason, he values when the national industry proposes real problems to be solved by students and academics. “We have to understand that engineering projects not only generate wealth but a series of impacts affect the population,” he added.

In this regard, Dr Jorge Bravo says that the engineers graduated from Universidad de Santiago are recognized for their ability to efficiently solve the problems that they face, no matter what their field of work is.

Engineering in the service of society

At the Faculty, everyone is convinced that it is important to train engineers to be able to efficiently interact with other specialties, as this profession is related to every human activity. Therefore, the Faculty is discussing the possibility of creating new Engineering programs in Mechatronics, Telematics or Biomedicine.

During his speech, Dean Espinoza highlighted the important role of academics, students, administrative staff and former students of this Faculty in the development of the unit.

He acknowledged the applied research work of the faculty, which is reflected in the 158 publications between 2015 and 2016. Likewise, he stressed the work done by the Faculty in outreach and engagement and the creation of a Vice Dean Office for this purpose. “This year, we have signed seven collaboration agreements with universities in Chile and abroad and thirteen agreements with state entities and private companies,” he said.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

•   The team developed a sustainable 120 square meter house called “Casa Temperie.” The proposal aims to produce interaction and balance between housing and environment. The house has an innovative greenhouse heating system and seismic protection.

   

  The “Casa Temperie” (Temperie House) prototype was created and built by the Solar Energy Team of Universidad de Santiago (ESUS, in Spanish), which is currently a finalist in the Construye Solar 2017 contest organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development of Chile and the NGO La Ruta Solar.

  The second version of the contest intended to encourage students and professionals of universities from all over the country to build sustainable high quality houses, with a focus on the quality of life of vulnerable families and making available to everyone the technology associated to sustainable building, with a budget not exceeding $20 million pesos. 

  “We accepted the challenge of creating a habitable environment in a greenhouse. Our house is called Temperie, that means “controlled atmosphere”. We included a piston with rails that works with a Full Space system, that allows to enlarge the house during summer and shorten it in winter to reduce energy costs,” María Ignacia Lucares, student at the Architecture program and coordinator of communications, explains.

  Cutting-edge, sustainable and economic technology

   

  According to the members of the team, the Temperie House is a new concept of social house and it aims to produce interaction and balance between housing and environment.

  Edith Díaz, coordinator and student at the Architecture program, explains that the house includes thermo panels and a system for strategic control of sun light. Besides, it has galvanized steel modules and opaque coatings, and it can be assembled in only three days.

  María Ignacia Lucares says that the project “totally reflects Universidad de Santiago, as it is focused on social awareness and technical aspects. The other projects are focused on design. We focus on social needs, and we are concerned about sustainability and environment,” she says.

  The team has already received offers from sponsors to build the house, so they are analyzing the proposals.

  Jorge Lobiano, the Head of the School of Architecture says that the project is an interdisciplinary work that involves all the university. Although he was very happy for being finalists in the contest, he was not surprised, for the school usually has excellent results in national contests.

  Evaluation and work team

  The Solar Energy Team started this project in March 2016 with a group made up of five students at the School of Architecture. Currently, the team is formed by 32 students at the Architecture and Engineering programs and professors at the university. 

  Manuel Mellado, architect and professor at Universidad de Santiago de Chile said that this work has involved much effort. “This has been a big challenge, but it has been an honor to be part of the project. I have great expectations and we all expect to match up to the results that the School has obtained in other contests,” he said.

   

  Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Cristian Lara and Alonso Martínez, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, created Reciclapp, an application for mobile phones that allows everyone to recycle from his/her own house.

A year ago, Cristian Lara (23) and Alonso Martínez (23), both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago, gave a presentation at an international meeting of innovation and technology entrepreneurs (known as hackathons) about the project that they had been working on: an application for mobile devices to promote recycling and contribute to environmental care.

And this how the story of Reciclapp started: and innovative initiative that outpaced its competitors and allowed the two friends to access the Santiago Innova business incubator.

According to the Chilean Ministry of the Environment, the country generates almost 17 million metric tons of waste solids a year, and 6.5 million of them come from households, but only 10% is recycled. Cristian Lara highlights that by using Reciclapp, anyone can inform from his/her own house about the material they will give to the recycling-material collectors.

“For example, you can inform about plastic or glass bottles, cans, cardboard boxes and paper that you plan to discard and the date and time when this material can be collected. We prepare a map and a schedule with all the information, we send it to the collectors and they organize their roadmaps,” he says.

Work placement abroad

After winning the hackathon, Lara and Martínez faced new challenges to raise funds and continued quickly positioning Reciclapp.

In November 2015, they presented their project in fiiS, the largest social innovation international festival in the country, and a month later, they became the first Universidad de Santiago students in winning the largest entrepreneurship contest for university students in Chile and Latin America: Jump Chile.

The prize they were awarded included a work placement abroad, in Bolivia. Once in that country, they implemented pilot schemes in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, El Alto y La Paz. “We were warmly welcomed; we met with some Bolivian Ministers and we managed to establish the company there,” he says. 

Later, new members joined the work team: Ian Bofill and Christian Torreblanca, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program; Bárbara Urrutia, a student at the Business Engineering program; Manuel Fonseca, a student at the Industrial Engineering program of Universidad de Chile, and Efraín Rebolledo, a computer engineer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and current programmer at Microsoft.

Back in Santiago, they entered the Start-Up Chile acceleration program, which allowed them to raise 25 million pesos and gave them the possibility of participating in the program.

Early in August, they won another victory during the GeekCamp, an activity that gathers together investors and mentors from all over the world, particularly from Silicon Valley.

This allowed them to raise at least 60 million pesos and they also received two special awards for the best pitch and the best business model. Now, they are planning to travel in Latin America and the United States by the end of this year.

Besides, the project will be one of the first Chilean entrepreneurships included in the Facebook Messenger application. For now, it is only available for Android OS.

“Our recycler’s data base is larger than the one of the Ministry of the Environment; they are more than 250, in 35 different cities in Chile and we are very close to them. In Bolivia, we are working with more than 400 recyclers. We are planning to add more cities in Chile and Bolivia next year and we also expect to be operating in Colombia, Mexico and the United States, in California.

University support

Cristian Lara says that, without the support of Universidad de Santiago, the project would not have been successful. He highlights the support given by the Industrial Engineering Department (DIIND, in Spanish), particularly by director Miguel Alfaro Marchant and professors Juan Sepúlveda Salas and Marcela Rosinelli Contreras.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project organized a contest in which 21 academics were selected to visit foreign institutions focused on innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago and the International Partnerships Program of the Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project organized a contest to select academics who will visit renowned foreign universities with the purpose of consolidating, broadening and building links between the faculty and those institutions.

Another goal of these academic missions will be to boost the development of exchange mechanisms and/or programs for academics and researchers who will contribute in turn to promote student exchange both at an undergraduate and graduate level.

According to Jack Brady, assistant director of the International Partnerships Program of the project, “these missions will result in agreements that will connect Universidad de Santiago with world-class universities. This will directly contribute to the goals of the project in terms of undergraduate and graduate students exchange and collaboration in different areas.”

Many academics of the faculty have already contacted different universities which focus is innovation. They will have the mission of “bringing Fab Lab models that we can adapt to our faculty and facilitate the development technology-based graduate programs,” Brady said.

The activity was led by the dean of the faculty, Juan Carlos Espinoza, and the co-director of the Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project, Dr Mario López. On the occasion, the academics signed the missions’ commitments.

Some of the universities that the 21 academics will visit are: Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau (France), Università di Bologna (Italy), Università di Torino (Italy), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Politécnico di Milano (Italy), Universidad de Navarra (Spain), University of Washington (USA), Stanford University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Ecole Polytechnique (France), Université de Lorraine (France), Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (Spain), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain) and others.

These missions will allow building a direct relationship with institutions that can generate networks to contribute to the development of the Observatory for University Internationalization and will help to identify strategies to become part of university international networks and innovation and entrepreneurship centers. 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

•  Representatives of the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research met for a working session with representatives of the Consorcio Ingeniería 2030 formed by Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de Concepción and Universidad de Santiago.

   

  Representatives of the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt, in Spanish) met for a working session with representatives of the Consorcio Ingeniería 2030 (Engineering 2030 Consortium) formed by Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de Concepción and Universidad de Santiago, in order to join efforts for a collaborative work.

  Lotte Bak, Conicyt’s program executive and Cecilia Benítez, Conicyt’s program coordinator, participated in the meeting too.

  The delegation of the consortium- sponsored by the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo, in Spanish)- was made up of its president, Claudio Zaror; the dean of the Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago, Juan Carlos Espinoza, and the director of Universidad de Santiago’s Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project, Jorge Bravo.

  Members of the project’s commission for international alliances attended the meeting too: Álvaro Peña y Diego Núñez, of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso; Pablo Catalán and Claudio Zaror, of Universidad de Concepción, and Aldo Saavedra, Marcela Jamett, Carolina Chávez and Diana Quevedo of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

  The purpose of the meeting organized by the Faculty of Engineering was to establish the lines of action abroad. In this regard, Conicyt expressed its great interest in contributing to university internationalization and thus encouraging the consortium to go along the same way.

  For his part, the dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Juan Carlos Espinoza, said: “We need our international engagement plan to go hand in hand with the guidelines of institutions like Conicyt.” He added that the Faculty of Engineering has progressed in these matters and now the Nueva Ingeniería 2030 Project, together with the consortium, should define its engagement lines considering the needs of Chile and the Chilean engineers.

  According to Conicyt’s program coordinator, Cecilia Benítez, this type of activity provides real integration opportunities and gives the possibility of presenting different contests, so that universities are able to apply for these benefits, based on their scientific merit.

  She added that Conicyt has built links with institutions in different countries that could support Nueva Ingeniería 2030.

  “Strengthening links with a consortium that gathers almost 20,000 engineering students is a unique factor that is highly regarded by Conicyt. For this reason, we expect to support the consortium so that it can develop strong international links,” Lotte Bak said.

  Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The study will last three years and it will develop computational tools to optimize the equipment and processes in which energy is transferred by fluids using numerical simulation.

According to Dean Juan Carlos Espinoza, it is essential “to understand that Engineering projects not only generate wealth but a series of impacts that can affect the well-being of the population either positively or negatively.”

The Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago celebrated its 100th anniversary with a ceremony at the Salón de Honor Hall. The anniversary coincides with a moment when the faculty has set itself the primary goal of becoming one of the 50 best faculties in this field at an international level. 

The Faculty has the mission of contributing to the development of the country through the comprehensive training of Engineers in different specialties, including research in the areas of scientific and technological innovation. For this purpose, today the Faculty includes nine Departments: Electricity, Geography, Industries, Informatics, Mechanics, Metallurgy, Mining, Civil Works and Chemistry.

Currently, the Faculty has 12,360 undergraduate students, 150 full time teachers, 20 daytime programs and 19 evening programs, plus 17 Master’s programs, 5 doctoral programs and 20 postgraduate courses. “We have to adapt ourselves to the challenges that the country and Engineering development pose,” Dean Espinoza said.

One of the initiatives of the Faculty that is focused on the industrial development needs of the country is the project Nueva Ingeniería 2030, led by Dr Jorge Bravo Chacón. This initiative was launched in August, 2014, in order to train world-class engineers who are also able to change the productivity matrix in Chile.

“The Faculty of Engineering has contributed to the industrial development of the country through innovation,” Dean Espinoza said. “That means to create new products or generate improvements in a proactive process, with an important impact on peoples’ quality of life.

For this reason, he values when the national industry proposes real problems to be solved by students and academics. “We have to understand that engineering projects not only generate wealth but a series of impacts affect the population,” he added.

In this regard, Dr Jorge Bravo says that the engineers graduated from Universidad de Santiago are recognized for their ability to efficiently solve the problems that they face, no matter what their field of work is.

Engineering in the service of society

At the Faculty, everyone is convinced that it is important to train engineers to be able to efficiently interact with other specialties, as this profession is related to every human activity. Therefore, the Faculty is discussing the possibility of creating new Engineering programs in Mechatronics, Telematics or Biomedicine.

During his speech, Dean Espinoza highlighted the important role of academics, students, administrative staff and former students of this Faculty in the development of the unit.

He acknowledged the applied research work of the faculty, which is reflected in the 158 publications between 2015 and 2016. Likewise, he stressed the work done by the Faculty in outreach and engagement and the creation of a Vice Dean Office for this purpose. “This year, we have signed seven collaboration agreements with universities in Chile and abroad and thirteen agreements with state entities and private companies,” he said.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

•   The team developed a sustainable 120 square meter house called “Casa Temperie.” The proposal aims to produce interaction and balance between housing and environment. The house has an innovative greenhouse heating system and seismic protection.

   

  The “Casa Temperie” (Temperie House) prototype was created and built by the Solar Energy Team of Universidad de Santiago (ESUS, in Spanish), which is currently a finalist in the Construye Solar 2017 contest organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development of Chile and the NGO La Ruta Solar.

  The second version of the contest intended to encourage students and professionals of universities from all over the country to build sustainable high quality houses, with a focus on the quality of life of vulnerable families and making available to everyone the technology associated to sustainable building, with a budget not exceeding $20 million pesos. 

  “We accepted the challenge of creating a habitable environment in a greenhouse. Our house is called Temperie, that means “controlled atmosphere”. We included a piston with rails that works with a Full Space system, that allows to enlarge the house during summer and shorten it in winter to reduce energy costs,” María Ignacia Lucares, student at the Architecture program and coordinator of communications, explains.

  Cutting-edge, sustainable and economic technology

   

  According to the members of the team, the Temperie House is a new concept of social house and it aims to produce interaction and balance between housing and environment.

  Edith Díaz, coordinator and student at the Architecture program, explains that the house includes thermo panels and a system for strategic control of sun light. Besides, it has galvanized steel modules and opaque coatings, and it can be assembled in only three days.

  María Ignacia Lucares says that the project “totally reflects Universidad de Santiago, as it is focused on social awareness and technical aspects. The other projects are focused on design. We focus on social needs, and we are concerned about sustainability and environment,” she says.

  The team has already received offers from sponsors to build the house, so they are analyzing the proposals.

  Jorge Lobiano, the Head of the School of Architecture says that the project is an interdisciplinary work that involves all the university. Although he was very happy for being finalists in the contest, he was not surprised, for the school usually has excellent results in national contests.

  Evaluation and work team

  The Solar Energy Team started this project in March 2016 with a group made up of five students at the School of Architecture. Currently, the team is formed by 32 students at the Architecture and Engineering programs and professors at the university. 

  Manuel Mellado, architect and professor at Universidad de Santiago de Chile said that this work has involved much effort. “This has been a big challenge, but it has been an honor to be part of the project. I have great expectations and we all expect to match up to the results that the School has obtained in other contests,” he said.

   

  Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Cristian Lara and Alonso Martínez, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, created Reciclapp, an application for mobile phones that allows everyone to recycle from his/her own house.

A year ago, Cristian Lara (23) and Alonso Martínez (23), both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program of Universidad de Santiago, gave a presentation at an international meeting of innovation and technology entrepreneurs (known as hackathons) about the project that they had been working on: an application for mobile devices to promote recycling and contribute to environmental care.

And this how the story of Reciclapp started: and innovative initiative that outpaced its competitors and allowed the two friends to access the Santiago Innova business incubator.

According to the Chilean Ministry of the Environment, the country generates almost 17 million metric tons of waste solids a year, and 6.5 million of them come from households, but only 10% is recycled. Cristian Lara highlights that by using Reciclapp, anyone can inform from his/her own house about the material they will give to the recycling-material collectors.

“For example, you can inform about plastic or glass bottles, cans, cardboard boxes and paper that you plan to discard and the date and time when this material can be collected. We prepare a map and a schedule with all the information, we send it to the collectors and they organize their roadmaps,” he says.

Work placement abroad

After winning the hackathon, Lara and Martínez faced new challenges to raise funds and continued quickly positioning Reciclapp.

In November 2015, they presented their project in fiiS, the largest social innovation international festival in the country, and a month later, they became the first Universidad de Santiago students in winning the largest entrepreneurship contest for university students in Chile and Latin America: Jump Chile.

The prize they were awarded included a work placement abroad, in Bolivia. Once in that country, they implemented pilot schemes in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, El Alto y La Paz. “We were warmly welcomed; we met with some Bolivian Ministers and we managed to establish the company there,” he says. 

Later, new members joined the work team: Ian Bofill and Christian Torreblanca, both students at the Industrial Civil Engineering program; Bárbara Urrutia, a student at the Business Engineering program; Manuel Fonseca, a student at the Industrial Engineering program of Universidad de Chile, and Efraín Rebolledo, a computer engineer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and current programmer at Microsoft.

Back in Santiago, they entered the Start-Up Chile acceleration program, which allowed them to raise 25 million pesos and gave them the possibility of participating in the program.

Early in August, they won another victory during the GeekCamp, an activity that gathers together investors and mentors from all over the world, particularly from Silicon Valley.

This allowed them to raise at least 60 million pesos and they also received two special awards for the best pitch and the best business model. Now, they are planning to travel in Latin America and the United States by the end of this year.

Besides, the project will be one of the first Chilean entrepreneurships included in the Facebook Messenger application. For now, it is only available for Android OS.

“Our recycler’s data base is larger than the one of the Ministry of the Environment; they are more than 250, in 35 different cities in Chile and we are very close to them. In Bolivia, we are working with more than 400 recyclers. We are planning to add more cities in Chile and Bolivia next year and we also expect to be operating in Colombia, Mexico and the United States, in California.

University support

Cristian Lara says that, without the support of Universidad de Santiago, the project would not have been successful. He highlights the support given by the Industrial Engineering Department (DIIND, in Spanish), particularly by director Miguel Alfaro Marchant and professors Juan Sepúlveda Salas and Marcela Rosinelli Contreras.

Translated by Marcela Contreras