The academic from the University of Concepción and senior researcher at the Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering, AC3E, Dr. Pamela Guevara, assumed the Deputy Directorship of the Center as of March 1 of this year, also becoming the first woman to assume this role.
Her outstanding career and significant achievements in her fields of research led her to join AC3E as an associate researcher in the Biomedical Systems line in 2018, where she has led various investigations related to medical image processing and analysis, and the development of tools for the study and analysis of brain connectivity. Later, in 2021, she became a senior researcher in the line alongside researcher Dr. Matías Zañartu.
“I am very happy to assume this deputy directorship as it is an important recognition of my career at the Center. It is a great responsibility and challenge for which I will work hand in hand with a consolidated team whose capabilities, organization, and pleasant work environment have allowed it to position itself as a leading research center in electrical and electronic engineering for more than 10 years. It is very gratifying to join such a group,” said researcher Dr. Pamela Guevara.
The new deputy director is a Civil Electronic Engineer and holds a Master’s degree in Information, Systems, and Technology and a Doctorate in Physics from Université Paris-Sud in France. She is a specialist in medical image analysis. She has developed numerous methods for the study of brain connectivity from diffusion magnetic resonance images. With these, several atlases of brain fiber bundles have been created, which describe the main connections of the brain, which have allowed the study of different conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, among others.
The arrival of Dr. Guevara to the Deputy Directorship of AC3E will undoubtedly be an important opportunity to motivate more and more researchers, academics, and students to join the path of engineering or science. “Since its inception, the Center has developed various initiatives to bring more women into engineering, specifically in the field of electrical and electronic engineering, so this is a clear sign of what we want to achieve in terms of increasing female presence at the Center,” she noted.
One of the most important challenges she hopes to work on during this new period of the Center is to increasingly connect the members of the center with society so that it can visualize the impact of research centers on people. “We want to connect researchers more with development and technology transfer, achieve more collaborations between our different lines for the execution of multidisciplinary projects, and participate more actively in the dissemination of science and technology, to increase the visibility of everything we do at the Center,” she concluded.
