The Doctoral Program in Science with specialization in Applied Cellular and Molecular Biology of UFRO organized the online workshop and awarded the best oral presentations and posters.

The idea for the International Workshop on Applied Cellular and Molecular Biology came up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its second version, organized by the Doctoral Program in Science with specialization in Applied Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO), brought together participants of 22 Chilean and international universities.

The workshop consisted of four different symposia, three related to the fields of the doctoral program, and one that showed the students how to introduce the results of their research to the productive sector.

Besides the students, also researchers and experts of foundations and national and international research centres, companies for research, innovation and bioentrepreneurship, and public and private health institutions were among the participants.

“This important number of national and international participants was possible thanks to one of the good things the pandemic brought us, which is the use of online-platforms. The idea for this event came up in 2021, with the idea of actively maintaining and increasing our national and international partnerships during the pandemic. But also as an important opportunity for our students, graduates and academics to present their lines of research,” explained Dr. Luis Salazar Navarrete, the director of the program.

AWARDED PRESENTATIONS

During the workshop, the participating experts and students from Argentina, Canada, Columbia, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Spain, Panama and Chile had the chance to attend 17 conferences, 14 oral presentations and 28 poster presentations.

As part of the workshop, the three best oral presentations and poster presentations were awarded. Among the oral presentations, Daniel López Hernández from Universidad de La Frontera (Chile) reached the first place, Paula Marroquín Morales and Daniela Suárez Bernal from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Mexico) the second place, and Paulina Cabrera Herreros from Universidad de La Frontera (Chile) the third place.

Among the poster presentations, Katherine Izquierdo-Fiallo from Universidad de Santiago (Chile) achieved the first place, Consuelo Arias Lattes from Universidad San Sebastián (Chile) the second place, and Roberto Brito Mellado from Universidad de La Frontera (Chile) the third place.

Dr. Alejandra Chaparro Padilla, an academic from the Chilean university Universidad de Los Andes was in charge of the inauguration conference of the international event and presented “Oral Precision Medicine. New Perspectives”. The director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of UFRO (iDEAUFRO), Carlos Isaacs Bornand, was in charge of the final conference, where he presented the topic “Managing emerging technologies: New tools to move from lab to market”.