Between April 3rd and 5th, the Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering, AC3E, held the ninth version of its traditional Internal Seminar, an event that seeks to bring together the entire team each year to take stock of the work done, and which for the first time was held in Puerto Varas.

The objective of these days was to convene researchers and staff to share the Center’s recent results and achievements and, based on them, think about what their aspirations are for the Center’s next period and in what areas it should focus its attention, to continue being a space of excellence where academia and industry converge, and where projects with high economic and social impact are developed.

“This is an opportunity to get to know each other, talk and work with the people who make up the Center, and strengthen our relationships. A focus that we will work on a lot is the reapplication, a process in which we have worked a lot during the last years and for which today we have a much clearer idea of what we want to do for the next cycle,” mentioned Dr. Matías Zañartu, director of AC3E.

In the morning, Dr. Zañartu gave the Director’s Annual Report, where he summarized AC3E’s growth in recent years in aspects such as scientific excellence, the number of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, the increase of women in the Center, and the transfer and connection with the industry both nationally and internationally.

“Year 9 of AC3E was mainly characterized by obtaining more and better scientific publications, which show sustained growth in excellence. Additionally, we graduated 88 undergraduate students, 32 master’s students, and 11 doctoral students. We continue to advance in projects in connection with the industry, adding 16 projects, including an international one, as is the case of ASTRI. Another of our efforts was to create initiatives to bring science closer to society, which led us to develop various initiatives and with them reach more than 300 thousand people, which fills us with satisfaction,” he said.

Afterwards, Oscar Solar, general manager of AC3E, showed the progress of the strategic plan, where he summarized what the management of recent years has been and how the Center’s economic growth is projected.

For his part, Samir Kouro, deputy director of AC3E, presented the progress of the reapplication work, where he showed a summary of the work that the tenured researchers have developed and that will be the basis of the next 10 years of the research center.

In the afternoon session, the first group work session was held, which invited the Research, Technology Transfer, and Development Units to provide their ideas to define part of the content of the “Applied Research Areas,” fundamental inputs to face the reapplication process.

The following day, the Technology Transfer and Communications Units presented the main milestones and projects of the last year and invited the participants to propose new ideas to enhance the work in their respective areas.

As in previous versions, the days were an excellent opportunity to strengthen teamwork and learn about the points of view of the Center’s members to include them in future decisions and continue dreaming big.