The THE Rankings 2019 report places the UFRO in seventh place in Chile and in first place among regional state universities.

The level of quality at the Universidad de La Frontera has been acknowledged again in the latest edition of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019, in which the UFRO is in seventh place among the Chilean universities in general and in first place among the Chilean regional state universities. In the Latin-American context, it is placed in the range 61-70.

This ranking is one of the most prestigious ones, and for its report 2019, Times Higher Education judged more than 1200 research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. Therefore, they use 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons.

In the general ranking, the UFRO is placed in the range 801-1000, the same one than in 2017. Regarding the details, our institution climbed up in almost all items, with an important increase in Research and Citation Impact, while another one of the best valued fields was International Outlook, in which it classified in the fifth decile.
Regarding the item Teaching, you can observe a decrease of almost two points, what could mainly be explained by the results of the annual reputation survey conducted among a group of academics who are participating in the ranking.

INSTITUTIONAL COMMITTEE

With the aim of a better positioning of the Universidad de La Frontera in these external measurements, the university is planning a committee whose main role would be the analysis of new institutional strategies for impacting in the quality ranking.

The idea of this committee, which will consist of UFRO academics and professionals, will focus on finding new ways of addressing these rankings. Therefore, they will specialize on understanding the methods of measuring the objective and perceived (reputation) university quality, in order to choose a comprehensive institutional strategy, which would start in 2019 in order to see its impacts in two to six years from now.

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The project, which is led by students in engineering, business engineering and physiotherapy, aspires to be a creative solution that is easy to use and maintain, eye-catching and of low cost.

The group of students of the Universidad de La Frontera presented this innovative device that is meant to turn into an alternative or complementary solution for physiotherapy in children with chronic bronchial diseases.

“Fisiosmart” is the name of this vibration vest that has been elaborated to remove secretions in 2 to 12 year old children that aspires to be a creative solution that is easy to use and maintain, eye-catching and of low cost.

The device has been created by students of the Macro Faculty of Engineering in Chile and students in physiotherapy. It is designed to show its effectiveness in a short period of time. It is made of a net of motors with counterweight, which are connected to a wide pulse modulating circuit, with a potentiometer that permits to regulate the vibrations frequency according to the physical properties of the secretions, acting directly on them, what facilitates its elimination.

At the beginning, the project was financed by the Macro Faculty of Engineering in Chile (through the competition “Experimentando”) and, afterwards, by the Regional Support Program for Entrepreneurs (PRAE) of the Production Development Corporation (CORFO). The vest was presented at the UFRO thanks to the alliance the team of students made with the private company for its development.

“We have an application that controls this device and allows to use three vibration modes and three frequencies, from 100 to 300 hertz. The vest allows to remove the secretion in children and avoids that a basic disease turns into something more complex,” José Luis Portiño, graduate in Civil Industrial Engineering with specialization in Mechanics and the director of the project, explained.

In this context, Franco Pérez, the CORFO technical executive, said: “It is important to support entrepreneurship linked to the fields that have certain problems nowadays. The students applied for PRAE funds and received funding of 15 million Chilean pesos, what allowed them to develop the working prototype of their project.”

Rodrigo Navia, dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Science, emphasized the multidisciplinary work of students from three different faculties for the realization of this initiative.

“This project has been particularly successful because they managed to leverage CORFO funds and the advice of Incubatec in order to put the product on the market with an appropriate business model. This shows that our students are not only able to work on issues of social impact, but also can develop, design and prototype products of commercial interest,” he said.

ACCESSIBLE TO PATIENTS

Although devices that are similar to the one that has been developed by the UFRO students do already exist on the market, the high costs make it difficult to acquire them. “There are vests that cost between 15 and 20 thousand dollars. We reduced this price considerably and arrived at a figure close to a million Chilean pesos. In an economy of scale, this price can be reduce even more,” José Portiño sustained.

Finally, Valeska Geldres, the dean of the Faculty of Law and Business, expressed: “For us, it is a fact that entrepreneurship at a young age is possible. When you take the plunge, you have to take calculated risks and that means you have to associate yourself with people of other disciplines and experiences, what has been shown in the present case.”

Written by: Mauricio Antivil
Macro Faculty of Engineering

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.

This program gives students the opportunity to get practical work experience abroad and to get to know different contexts within their professional training.

Since 2016, the Universidad de La Frontera, through the Faculty of Engineering and Science and the Student Mobility Unit of the International Affairs Office, is constantly working on the coordination of practical training experiences abroad for their students, in alliance with Temuco UniverCiudad, an institution that is cooperating with the International Association for Student Exchange for Practical Experience (IAESTE).

This cooperation that comes together in an initiative called FICA IAESTE promotes international student mobility experiences, giving the students of this institution the chance to do their practical training abroad.

This is how the UFRO sends its future professionals to other countries and also receives a large number of students from other nations in order to do their practical training at our institution.

RECEPTION

In this context, and making use of the visit of Bernard Baeyens, the IAESTE president, the coordination office for practical training of the Faculty of Engineering and Science, which is directed by Gabriela Reyes, organized a meeting of fellowship in order to welcome the five foreign students that now are at the UFRO within this program: Diana Rentería from Mexico, Kourtnie Ruber from the United States, Gabriel Brandao from Brazil, Vit Ruzicka from the Czech Republic and Taiga Inoue from Japan.

The participants in this meeting space were Juan Möller, the director of Undergraduate Affairs of the Faculty of Engineering and Science, together with Antonia Espinoza, who is in charge of the UFRO Student Mobility Unit, Valentina Carrasco, the coordinator of the IAESTE program in Chile, and also the academics who are going to participate as the students´ employees and host families.

“From what I´ve seen, this program responds a little to the concerns of teachers, directives and students, what makes me very happy, because I can see that it works, that there is an interest in giving stability to the program in the future,” Bernard Baeyens pointed out and added that the idea is to strengthen the work that is being done in Temuco through IAESTE, for later extending it to the rest of Chile.

Regarding the multicultural experience this kind of programs offer, Bernard Beayens has no doubt when he says: “The idea is precisely to make the people get used to facing a new culture, because I think that, the less you know something, the more you´ll learn.”

Having this in mind, the married couple of the two academics Dr. Carlos Muñoz and Dr. Sonia Salvo decided to receive Kourtnie Ruber, a student from the United States, at their home for a period of four months. They describe this experience as very enriching, especially for their daughters.

“We have two daughters, a nine year old and an eleven year old. They were very anxious to get to know Kourtnie, not only for learning more English, but also for getting to know a different culture, and, considering that we are planning to go to the United States for some time, this allows us to prepare our daughters in a better way. This is why we really appreciate this opportunity,” Dr. Muñoz explained.

VISIT

Within the visit of the IAESTE president, Gabriela Reyes, who is in charge of the FICA IAESTE practical training program, together with Antonia Espinoza, who is in charge of the UFRO Student Mobility Unit, presented the experiences since the implementation of this initiative in a forum that has been held in the Amor de Chile Hall, an activity in which also foreign and UFRO students, who have had the possibility to do a practical training outside of their home countries, participated.

“As a faculty, we are very happy, because we are increasingly consolidating and strengthening a program we have been working on since 2016, with the support of the Macro Faculty of Engineering and the Student Mobility Unit, but we want that the number of foreign students grows each time more. Therefore, I invite the academics to be part of the program, as host families or as employees, accepting students in their fields of work for their practical training in 2019 and, this way, contributing to internationalization, which is one of our main strategies,” Gabriela Reyes pointed out.

Finally, it is worth saying that, now, two students of this faculty are doing their practical training abroad: Nicolás Oyarzún in Colombia and Samuel Rilling in Germany; an experience that also awaits Camilo Cuevas, who is going to travel to Germany next December.

Written by: Daphne Bormann
Faculty of Engineering and Science