With the results, the Universidad de Concepción is positioned as the third house of studies with the most projects accepted at the national level.
A total of 1056 projects nationwide were submitted to the contest “Rapid Allocation of Resources for Research Projects on Coronavirus (Covid-19)”, opened by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID in Spanish) on April 29. This Wednesday, July 1, the entity delivered the results, which benefit 63 initiatives presented by universities and research centers throughout the country.
The call selected six projects led by academicians of the Universidad de Concepción from different areas of knowledge. “It is important to highlight the response capacity of our University researchers, who in a few weeks were able to present initiatives or reorient work that they had been developing, aiming to confront this new virus”.
In addition, they take advantage of the capacities present in our faculties and research centers to advance from the analysis towards the production of solutions that mitigate the different effects of this disease, both in patients and the society”, said the Vice-Rector for Research and Development of the Universidad de Concepción, Dr. Andrea Rodríguez Tastets.
The fund was born with the objective of promoting research, knowledge transfer and linking between actors of the national science, technology and innovation ecosystem, seeking to contribute to the investigation of the Covid-19 disease from different dimensions. Thus, unlike other calls, the contest selected projects with a technological, research, health, economic, social, cultural and humanistic approach.
With the six proposals selected (out of a total of 43 applications sponsored by UdeC), the Universidad de Concepción is positioned as the third university with the most accepted projects, behind the Universidad de Chile (17) and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (9).
UdeC research at the service of the country
The research chosen at the Universidad de Concepción ranges from basic research to the application of new technologies in disciplines related to medicine, engineering and education. The six selected applicants are:
Francisco Saavedra Rodríguez, from Engineering, who seeks to address problems related to the effects of Covid-19 in patients treated with mechanical ventilation, using non-invasive electrical stimulation in the phrenic nerve.
Estefanía Nova Lamperti, from the Faculty of Pharmacy, who presented an analysis of the potential lung damage as a collateral effect of the inflammatory response caused by the virus in patients who had the disease in an asymptomatic, moderate and severe manner.
María Inés Barría Cárcamo, researcher at the Faculty of Biological Cs., who will lead a longitudinal study of the immune response during sars-cov-2 infection and its convalescence stage.
Sonia Montenegro Heredia, from the Faculty of Medicine, who seeks to implement a new high-sensitivity molecular test to confirm indeterminate and negative results of sars-cov-2.
Alex Berg Gebert, Director of the Technological Development Unit (UDT), who will be in charge of the production of ecological face masks.
Alejandro Díaz Mujica, academician from the Faculty of Social Sciences, who together with an international team guides the development and implementation of teaching procedures to facilitate the readiness to learn in conditions of physical distancing, in first-year university subjects with medium or high risk of failure.
Source: UdeC News