Informe Final
Fundación Ciencia Para La Vida - Reporte Segundo Año Ejecución
Autor
Valenzuela-Valdés, Pablo
Institución
Resumen
During 2009, our investigators, posdocs and students published a total of 29 papers in ISI journals and presented a total of 91 communications to international scientific meetings and 36 to national meetings. Also our investigators participated in 2 Chapters of important books in their own fields. In addition, during 2009 we sent one new patent application and received noticed of 5 granted patents from previous applications.
Of notice is the paper by Dr. Burzio in the Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. This paper, presented by Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman, has generated a great deal of interest among investigators in the USA and Europe. The research of Dr. D. Holmes on Bioinformatics and Genome Biology has been highly recognized. Dr. Holmes received 3 independent awards during this period, most notably from the International Board of the American Society of Microbiology. Dr. Rosemblatt’s work has also been locally recognized, and one of his doctoral students received the “Best Doctoral Thesis Award-2009”. Another area in which our research team stands out is in obtaining new grants. One of our young researchers is part of an American team that obtained a prestigious Howard Hughes Collaborative Innovation Award. Additionally, during this period we obtained 3 new Fondecyt grants and 12 of our doctoral students obtained Doctoral Fellowships from Conicyt.
Advanced Training Higher education and training is one of the priorities of our Fundación. As in previous years, our investigators held faculty appointments at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Andrés Bello and Universidad San Sebastián. In this capacity we participate in the Ph.D. and MD programs of these universities. During 2009, a total of 103 students did their thesis work directly or indirectly help by the Conicyt PFB16 Program. 47 of them worked for undergraduate degrees; 4 for master degrees and 52 for Ph.D. degrees, all in several areas of biological sciences. During this year 2 of our students completed their Ph.D. thesis and graduated. We also had 16 Posdoctoral Fellows. During 2009, 11 of 15 students accepted in the Biotechnology Program were awarded Fellowships from Conicyt. The strong international collaborative network fostered by the Fundación has open to our graduate students the possibility of 36 months research visits to foreign labs in subjects related to their Ph.D. thesis. In 2009, 18 graduate students spent time in these activities. In addition, the Fundación constantly seeks out opportunities to bring cutting-edge knowledge to its students and researchers through international courses, symposia and workshops. In the last year our Fundación organized the Fifth International Symposium “Science & Friendship” and received the visit and seminars from 25 international scientists identified below under 3.2.
During 2009 students doing their thesis work maintained interactions with the Chilean industrial sector among them BHP Billiton in biomining; Association of Fruit Exporters on fruit ripening and fruit pathogens; Mininco on resistance of trees to abiotic stress; GrupoBios S.A., Recalcine S.A. on salmon pathogens, Andes Biotechnologies S.A. in cancer research, Microsoft in bioinformatics, Medivation Inc., in drug development and Clínica Las Condes on organ transplant. Programa de Investigación Asociativa (PIA) Programa de Investigación Asociativa (PIA) Finalizado