A delegation of TARDEC (US Army Tank Automotive RDE Center) visited SEPARI (Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies) from the Technical University Federico Santa María, during the tour they took of our country to identify and establish relationships with US allies.  The objective was to develop diverse technologies like vision systems, navigation systems, new materials, new control strategies for terrestrial vehicles, new vehicle energy strategies and support systems.

TARDEC  is the division of the North American Army whose mission is to provide all of the engineering and research systems applied to the more tan 2800 terrestrial combat systems.  TARDEC develops and integrates appropriate technologies to increment the efficiency and effectiveness of the current forces, and develops the future forces to the highest capacity.

The delegation was headed by Dr. Grace M. Bochenek, Director of TARDEC; LTC Andrés Contreras, Military Deputy; MAJ Anh Ha, Deputy Quick Reaction Cell; David Thomas, Associate Director Intelligent Ground Systems; Matt Reisner, Quick Reaction Cell; COL Donald Gibson; Denisse Ramírez Action Officer and Bernadita Villasante Programs & Operations Analyst.

This delegation met with the Rector of the Technical University Federico Santa María and SEPARI President, José Rodríguez; SEPARI CEO Víctor Aguilera; Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Division Manager, José Miguel Larenas; researchers of that division Ian Hugues; César Muñoz, and also Jaime Rebolledo, belonging to the Power Laboratory of the Technical University Federico Santa María.                                                    

Dr. Bochenek, director of TARDEC affirmed, “from my perspective and experience I find the technical depth and experience present in the SEPARI team very interesting.  I believe that in any country where this level of professionals comes together, a group of very high level solutions will be generated.  SEPARI´s operational model also has a strong link with the industry, attempting to solve real problems.  This is key and decisive for the development of technologies that will be transferred effectively.  This model is different from the traditional model in an academic environment, where the knowledge or development are not transferred to the industry.  This is one of the reasons that I find myself at SEPARI today, as a way that we can delve deeper into the discussion of the projects, techniques and methodologies that could translate into benefits for the North American Army ”, said the Director. 

At this time, Doctor Bochenek extended an invitation to SEPARI to attend the conference about Terrestrial Vehicles in the month of August, and take advantage of the opportunities to advance in identifying common areas of interest.

CEO of SEPARI, Víctor Aguilera said, “in our Center we look for opportunities to develop R +D projects that generate intellectual property and advanced technologies of global impact.  To do this, we make efforts to connect and collaborate with the best Research and Development agencies at the international level.  TARDEC is, without a doubt, one of these agencies.  They have projects in development that are front-runners in technology in relevant areas such as energy efficiency, alternative fuel, power electronics, new materials, robotics, among many others.  Of these, many  projects are being developed in the University Santa María as well as SEPARI.  We feel very honored by Dr. Grace M. Bochenek´s visit, the director of TARDEC leading the proceedings, and we hope that it will be the start of a fruitful relationship of collaboration.

José Miguel Larenas, Manager of the Artificial Intelligence & Robotics  and Computational Materials Science Division of SEPARI expressed that “TARDEC´s visit confirms the level of excellence that we have achieved in SEPARI in a very short period of time, and also validates the operational model that is unique in Chile and is one of the factors in our success.  We have been able to establish relationships with prestigious international organizations that work on the frontiers of Science and always in applied research that must necessarily transfer the technologies.  We will continue forward with the negotiations to the point at which our methods and technologies can contribute in the generation of innovation that we hope will be beneficial to the US Army as well as civilian society.  It cannot be ignored that the defense industry is the number one promoter in the world of technology development and that later that is transferred to civilian use.

It bears mentioning that this visit was made possible thanks to the steps taken by Coronel Donald Gibson from ITC- AMERICAS RDECOM from the North American Army, an organization with which SEPARI has established a solid relationship of cooperation for various years.

 The Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Studies, Separi, invites developers, researchers, academics and business people to the International Workshop on Power and Energy “The Science Behind Energy Assurance”, which will take place from 30 June to 1 July, 2009 at the Federico Santa Maria University of Technology in Valparaíso, Chile. This Workshop is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG), ITC-Americas and the U.S. Embassy Santiago. 

The workshop's objectives are: to present energy assurance challenges in the Americas and what's being done in the region to address them, identifying those areas for joint R&D activities in Chile, USA and the region through information exchanges and interaction among participants; to exchange frontier knowledge in power and energy, stimulating scientific cooperation between the U.S. and Chilean and regional research groups; to select and prioritize a set of applied power and energy projects at a conceptual design stage that could be developed in Chile, the U.S. and the region; and to foster cooperation between the scientific community and industry to improve industrial performance and social wellness in our countries by proposing new applied solutions for Energy Assurance. 

The workshop is divided into sessions that will focus on the future directions of alternative energy sources (ocean energy, biofuels, hydrogen, solar); energy efficiency & power conversion; energy storage; and high-energy pulse power.

For more information visit: www.separi.cl/wpe2009

Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies (SEPARI) has been granted funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies, SEPARI, has been granted funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense for the joint development of a system that focuses on a high-impact international problem, namely, the development of an innovative demining system.

DARPA is the most important R&D agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). DARPA manages and conducts a very important portfolio of base and applied research and development projects for the DoD, focusing its efforts on areas where the expected risks but also the potential benefits are high and where successful projects can lead to disruptive technologies that may advance the strategic defense interests of the U.S. worldwide. In the past, DARPA has carried out high-impact projects such as the development of ARPANET, a predecessor technology to the Internet, as well as renowned projects in the area of aircraft technology such as the stealth aircraft, the Global Hawk and the Predator projects that led to the development of the first “invisible” aircraft and the first aircrafts operated from remote.

The innovative demining system will be based on a combination of technologies involving high-performance computing at very high processing speed of signals sent by special-purpose sensors planted on swarms of robots. The robots in the swarms will programmed using artificial intelligence technologies and will be endowed with the ability to navigate through the minefield and cooperate with each other.

The deployment of swarms of robots implemented as intelligent agents is the key technology foundation of the project proposed by SEPARI and will constitute a highly relevant contribution to the advancement of the state of the art in the area of autonomous systems, robotics, and demining operations.

In Chile, the minefields located in the north of the country and on the islands located to the south of the Beagle Channel present important technical challenges. With the aim of meeting this challenge through a cost-effective and low-risk solution, SEPARI has proposed a technology solution based on an unmanned system where the demining operations are carried out entirely by robots, therefore avoiding the risks to human lives associated with demining operations and reducing the costs associated with them.

In order to achieve this goal the robots will be endowed with agency and autonomy, that is, they will be able to make their own decisions as a function of the decisions made by other robots in the swarm. Working in collaboration and without human intervention, the robots will be able to carry out each of the specific demining tasks assigned to them, including ground clearing and mine detection, neutralization, extraction and destruction.

The team is comprised of 15 members of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Group at SEPARI and will be led by researchers José Miguel Larenas, César Muñoz, Ian Hughes, and Nicolás Navarro. The team will interact with researchers of different laboratories at the DoD.

José Miguel Larenas, a manager of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Group at SEPARI who has been driving the development of demining technologies since 2000 and has participated in projects in this area since 1995, said about the project, “the concept of deploying swarms of robots endowed with intelligent agents capabilities that we are proposing in this project is very innovative and is also the reason why SEPARI was able to attract the interest of DARPA to participate in this project. Currently, we are working on a first proof-of-concept phase that will lead to a prototype of the proposed system in twelve months. We will deploy the prototype system in a simulated minefield using small robots that will already have artificial intelligence functionality in this first phase of development. We will then build the complete system improving its level of precision and effectiveness.”                            

“This system will be very versatile and will be able to be deployed in different environments and regions with only minor adaptations. We will also endow the system with the ability to learn from its past experience, thereby improving its performance in detecting and extracting explosives. The system will also provide information about the minefield by detecting and storing information in a geographical database. Over time, the information in this database will become more robust, complete, and accurate, thereby improving the mine detection probability and the overall performance of the system,” pointed out the researcher.

Víctor Aguilera, Director of SEPARI, added, “this is a global problem that many countries that have signed the Ottawa Convention will need to solve. Chile, as a signatory to the Ottawa Convention, has committed resources to comply with the resolutions of the convention and will need to neutralize the minefields located in its territory. Every twenty minutes a person is either injured or killed by a mine or an explosive in the world today. The problem is not only that the elimination of a minefield is a task that involves high risks and costs. At the speed at which mine fields are being neutralized today, we will require nearly a thousand years to rid the world of this problem.”

Commenting on the importance of this project, the director of SEPARI elaborated, “this is a highly relevant project for our institute no only for the worldwide impact of this problem and the challenges it poses in terms of technology innovation, but also for the ties and collaboration it helps create between SEPARI and DARPA. We have been able to establish this collaboration thanks to our previous engagement with another partner in the area of applied research for the defense industry, namely, the International Technology Center Americas (ITC) of the U.S. Army. The collaboration we are pioneering with DARPA in Latin America will open up a window of future collaborations for the entire academic community in the region with one of the most important scientific and technology research agencies in the world. The support of DARPA and ITC will allow us to continue to demonstrate that we can generate, from our city of Valparaíso, technologies that have global impact and are of interest to the international research community.”

The project materializes after a delegation led by Dr. Anthony Tether, Director of DARPA, visited SEPARI in September 2008. On that occasion, Dr. Tether met with the President of Federico Santa María University of Technology, who also serves as President of SEPARI, Professor José Rodríguez; with the Director of SEPARI, Mr. Víctor Aguilera; with the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Navy, Mr. Mariano Sarratea; as well as with members of the Board of Directors of SEPARI and members of the research team and other university officers and directors. During the visit of the DARPA delegation, SEPARI researchers and faculty members and research staff of several departments and academic units of the university were able to present over 10 different R&D project proposals to be considered by DARPA for joint development and funding. Out of the ten projects proposed, DARPA confirms today the funding of this first project and its first joint collaboration with SEPARI.

The Academic Relations Manager of Microsoft Latin America, Eduardo Núñez, and the Academic Relations Manager of Microsoft Chile, Alejandro Pacheco, visited SEPARI and met their researchers in order to know more about the projects being developed at this Centre.

SEPARI, among its objectives, tries to link the academy and the industry. This visit made by Microsoft’s executives is very relevant to establish links with this multinational.

SEPARI’s mission is to become a global IT and applied HPC centre of excellence. Some of the areas on which SEPARI is developing projects are: advanced engineering design, process simulation, advanced visualization technologies, on line media communication, and next generation internet technologies.

SEPARI is constantly looking for technological partners for the projects being developed, as well as new market opportunities and customer needs. Because of this, Microsoft and SEPARI are exploring the possibility of creating strategic alliances to generate synergies.

One of the projects presented this time was “Sentiment Analysis and Monitoring System”, which is an online marketing application that pretends to revolutionize the “Search Engine Marketing”. Dr. Harold Paredes-Frigolett, SEPARI’s Internet Technologies and Applications Division Manager, and project leader, pointed: “we think that in the future, the keywords used on search engines will be replaced with user models, that will provide more relevant results, but also, more appropriated and customized publicity”.

According to Paredes, the possibilities to create an Alliance with Microsoft  to develop this project are high, “particularly, the fact that we could migrate components of or base technology to Microsoft’s products, or that we could try Microsoft’s new initiatives like MS Azure, which have a huge potential in online marketing applications.

Related to the Project called “Swarm Intelligence for Cooperative Robotics applied to the Humanitarian Demining Problem”, Microsoft executives remarked that this project has a global reach, and pointed out that they have a MS Robotic Studio System that could be used to develop robots and intelligence, looking for the creation of a Robotics for Demining Lab, on which University of Santa María students could work using MS Robotic Studio.

José Miguel Larenas, SEPARI’s AI & Robotics Division Manager, leader of the development team of the Demining Project, pointed out that “we are facing a global humanitarian problem, because there are 78 countries with nearly 100 million mines that kill or mutilate a person every 20 minutes. To carry on this incredibly hard task, we require efforts coming from Companies, Universities, Military Forces and Governments”. 

Other project presented this time was “Simply4People”, which tries to generate internet communities on the eGov area, applied to cities. Its objective is to make it easier for City Councils to develop their IT platforms, reducing implementation times and costs. This consist on outsource, through this platform, some of the services provided by the Council. SEPARI is developing the technology that will allow simplifying the access to those platforms.

Cristian López, SEPARI’s E-Government Division Manager, and leader of this project, said that “Microsoft is also developing internet technologies to generate online services, and our project is focused on the development of a platform between it and the City Councils. Microsoft is also very close to other line which is the generation of communities, and through this service, we have that objective too. Besides, the technology that we developed is based on Microsoft’s.

Finally, the Academic Relations Manager of Microsoft Latin America, Eduardo Núñez, said that “the projects presented by SEPARI are aligned with the new mission of Microsoft Research, which gives support with computers to researchers that require help on this area to develop their projects”.

A delegation including high executives of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), from the United States, visited SEPARI (Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies) at the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria.

In their visit, they met SEPARI’s President and USM’s Director, José Rodríguez; SEPARI’s Director, Victor Aguilera; Chilean Navy Commander-in-Chief, Mariano Sarratea; SEPARI’s Board members; some of its researchers, and USM authorities.

On the other hand, DARPA’s delegation was integrated by Anthony Tether, Director; Joe Kurjanowicz, Chief of Staff;  Joe Martínez, and Heather Campbell, Director’s Assistants; Commander Donald Gibson, US Army International Technology Center-Americas (ITC), from the US Embassy; and Elmer Román, Americas Region Director, US Navy Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG), also from the US Embassy.

DARPA is an organization that centralizes Research and Development for the US Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and drives a selection of basic and applied research projects for the DoD, looking for those projects where research and technologies provide high risk but also high profit, where a successful project could bring huge advances for the Army and its missions.                          

The projects under development that were presented by SEPARI were: Predictive Control of Power Converters and Engines; Feeling Analysis and Monitoring System; Swarm Intelligence for Cooperative Robotics applied to the Humanitarian Demining Problem; Cupper-Based Biocide Surfaces as a barrier for cross contamination and biological threats; Atomic Scale Design of metallic glasses of high or low density; From the neurophysiological modeling of the retina towards a new Image Processing and Compression Method.                                                                                  

Anthony Tether showed his interest on the projects presented, and said that he will recommend to the people in charge of the involved areas their technical evaluation. He also said that “we travel to many different parts of the world looking for places where new ideas are generated. We are interested on meeting different groups of researchers, make links and contacts, and develop joint projects. This is my first time in Chile, and I see that the projects being developed in SEPARI are of high level, and have great potential”.                                                                     

DARPA’s visit to SEPARI is very important for this organization and for the local scientific community, because it opens a new way for scientific and technological collaboration with one of the most important Defense Agencies of the world.

Dr. Jorge Martinez is a full time Theoretical Chemist researcher in the Materials Science Group at SEPARI. His work is focused in designing new materials through the use of computational tools, without experimental input data. He has recently published along with Dr. Alejandro Toro-Labbé the scientific article entitled "The Reaction Force. A Scalar Property to Characterize Reaction Mechanisms" in the Journal of Mathematical Chemistry (JOMC). Dr. Alejandro Toro-Labbé is associated to "Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile".

The content of the article is explained by himself:

"This article deals with the necessary elemental mathematical treatments to support a concept  proposed for a few years ago in a first article published in 1999 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A by Dr. Toro-Labbé; in this article, the fundamentals of the reaction force was suggested  by means of a numerical or analytical differentiation established between the energy and the reaction coordinate; the problem is the obtained quotient has the same units of force as understood in physics, but rigorously speaking, it is not an ordinary force because it has a magnitude only and has no direction associated to the reaction coordinate. Nevertheless, the reaction force presents some positive and negative values along the whole reaction coordinate; or negative (positive) values only when a dissociation (association) reaction occurs. Having the reaction force one will be able to calculate reaction works, thus establishing a rational partition of the energy of the reaction along the reaction coordinate, but if most theoretical chemists do not accept the concept of reaction force due to the lack of rigorous mathematical definition, they will not accept the subsequent concepts as reaction works" as stated by Martinez.

Up to now, before publishing this scientific article, the reaction force concept has been used by a reduced number of theoretical chemists in analyzing the reaction mechanisms of chemical reactions (for instance Dr. Politzer and Dr. Murray from the United States ). Now having a formal definition for the reaction force, other colleagues will be able to use it without wondering whether that concept is correctly defined or not, its mathematical definition as explained in the JOMC paper will back the use of this concept. The reaction force allows to decompose the reaction energy (which implies the thermodynamic aspects or how much amount of energy is going to release) and the energy barrier (which implies the kinetic aspects or how long the reaction is going to last) in amounts of energy that can be associated to structural and electronic rearrangements that any chemical reaction exhibits, so the reasons for understanding the chemical reaction might be supported through the use of this concept. The published paper includes a set of very simple molecular systems presenting all basic nuclear movements that any chemical reaction can show whatever the number of atoms involved in the reaction.

Dr. Peter Politzer and Dr. Jane Murray are two of the most respected scientists in the area of theoretical chemistry and energetic materials, for their knowledge, experience and achievements  in this critical field that deals with explosives and propellants.

Politzer and Murray recently visited the Southeastern Pacific Research Institute at Valparaiso, SEPARI, in the context of the research project entitled “From Computational Chemistry toward Systematic Design of Novel Neutralizer Compounds for Energetic Materials”.

SEPARI aims to develop neutralizer compounds to safely destroy explosives in situ, for example antipersonnel-mines, anti-tank mines or other explosive devices, the handling of which is of high risk for human operators.

In the framework of this project, Professor Peter Politzer gave a Master Class hosted by Santa Maria University of Technology, Campus Valparaiso. This was sponsored by the US Embassy, RDECOM through the International Technology Office-Americas represented by Commander Donald Gibson, and the Office of Naval Research Global represented by Mr. Elmer Roman, all based in Santiago. The Master Class attracted professors of the Chilean community, university students, members of the Chilean Navy and Chilean Air Force, and representatives of local non-governmental organizations.

Professor Murray stated that “Computational chemistry is a powerful tool that allows us to calculate and understand existing energetic compounds’ behavior and to predict some properties of compounds not yet synthesized.” Chilean Navy Commander Hernán Ossa, stated “this is a non-explored arena in this country and Latin-America, which deserves immediate attention by this kind of research institute in order to accelerate scientific knowledge to support demilitarization operations like humanitarian demining.”

As of today, SEPARI is conducting efforts toward the development of this important project by attracting the interest of governmental agencies to fund this research.

Towards working for new opportunities involving the development and introduction of new technologies on sea and defense matters, Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies' (SEPARI) President, and Chilean Navy, signed a cooperation agreement.

The ceremony had the presence of US ambassador, Paul Simmons; Navy Viceminister, Carolina Echeverría; Navy Commander-in-Chief, Mariano Sarratea; Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes, Navy Services Director; Fondef (Conicyt) Chief Executive Officer, Gonzalo Herrera; Alfonso Muga, Catholic University of Valparaíso's President, among other university and Navy authorities related to scientific research and technology.

To generate appropiate mechanisms to structure joint Applied R&D Projects, with the objective of materializing technology development opportunities, previously detected and validated, is what the “Cooperation Agreement for the development and application of new technologies on Sea and Naval operations” pretends, signed by Santa María University and SEPARI's President, and Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes, Navy Services Director.

SEPARI, an Applied Research Consortium that raises funds from Conicyt, trhough Fondef, is developing several high technology R&D projects, together with the Research Office of the US Navy, and Chilean Navy.

From this joint effort, started in the first trimester of 2007, have appeared several new opportunities for the development of new advanced technologies. For this reason, the Cooperation Agreement between SEPARI and Chilean Navy was signed, with the collaboration of the US Embassy and US Navy, through its Office of Naval Research.

Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes, pointed that “today, we have entered definitely in the Knowledge Era. Technologic advances are going amazingly fast, and we should face those changes in a very efficient and effective way. For that, its necessary to make this kind of alliances, because they are a basic need to develop new technologies, which are caracterized by a huge team work capacity. The idea is to join our efforts and work towards a common goal”.

As well, USM President, José Rodríguez, declared that “this is an iniciative that will benefit all the members of our university community, but mainly, it is a contribution to Valparaíso and our Region, because it will materialize projects on Naval and Port activities, which are the key industries in our economy. Valparaíso is the main seaport of Chile, where we import and export products from all over the world”.

US Ambassador, Paul Simmons, said that “our nation has noticed that it must use science as a collaboration tool between the United States and Chile, and, through the Navy and Educative Institutions, it has been concreted, making Valparaíso a cooperation axis. This agreement comes to confirm that.”

Also, Fondef CEO, Gonzalo Herrera, pointed that “this alliance comes after a long time working together, and we hope it lasts, because this kind of projects that we are working on are relatively unique in our country, so the projections they have are very high. Projects like the ones carried on by SEPARI, with a high potential application on local industry, and a global focus, are the ones that Fondef is willing to support.”

Senior officers of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) of the U.S. Navy visited the Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies (SEPARI) at the Federico Santa María University of Technology (USM) in Valparaíso.

The ONR delegation was headed by US Navy Rear Admiral William Landey, Executive Director of the Office of Naval Research, and included the participation of US Navy Rear Admiral Lee Metcalf, Director of the National Office of Global Maritime Situational Awareness, Dr. Patricia Gruber, Director of Research, and Mr. Elmer Román, Regional Director of the Office of Naval Research for the Americas. The delegation also included other naval officers and staff.

The delegation met with SEPARI’s Director, Mr. Víctor Aguilera, who gave an update on the first joint project conducted for the ONR at SEPARI, and with senior researchers within SEPARI's team, who presented areas of potential future research, development and collaboration.

Mr. Aguilera gave an overview of SEPARI and described the current status of this first joint project called “Fast Deployment Autonomous Distributed System for Real Time Augmented Reality Diving”, in which the Chilean Navy and local ITC companies are also participating. The technologies under development in this first project will allow a human diver to "dive from desk" by operating a diving device wirelessly and from remote while at the same time having a “real” diving experience through a stereoscopic 3D-augmented reality system. This project is co-funded by SEPARI, the ONR, and the Chilean Navy and has been under development at SEPARI since 2007.

A second objective of the delegation was to discuss other potential areas of collaboration with SEPARI. To this end, Mr. José Miguel Larenas, research fellow and member of the Computational Design and Performance Simulation of Materials Program at SEPARI, presented a project proposal in the area of nano-design and development of new materials. The proposed project aims to  develop new materials that leverage the bactericidal properties of cupper and could be used in the construction of hospitals and clinics subject to cross-contamination as well as in the equipment used in such environments. The main challenge of this project is to model and develop new alloys that blend the characteristics and properties of materials commonly used this industry, such as stainless steel, with the bactericidal properties of cupper.

SEPARI’s efforts in order to develop technologies for mine detection and demining were also presented during the meeting. SEPARI’s approach to this complex area is to develop swarms of low-cost lightweight robots which can then be deployed in a mine field. The approach proposed constitutes quite a departure from conventional approaches based on high-cost robots in that the robots are not only inexpensive to manufacture and endowed with the ability to "sense" the world but can make their own decisions and collaborate with each other in order to achieve a common goal. Central to this approach is the concept of value-driven autonomous agents. This concept could be applied to mine fields of different characteristics located in different environments, from desert fields and forests to swamp fields. 

Commenting on this project, Rear Admiral Landey said: "the ONR is currently executing several projects in the area of mine detection and demining that might benefit from the novel approach proposed by SEPARI. The idea of deploying low-cost robots endowed with the ability to act on their own account and collaborate with each other is novel and intriguing and may contribute to solving some of the most challenging problems in the area of mine detection and demining”.

Another area of potential collaboration was presented by Dr. Harold Paredes, associate senior researcher and head of the Next-Generation Internet Applications Program at SEPARI. The project proposal consists of the development of an Internet surveillance and security system based on user modelling technologies, an area of Artificial Intelligence that is being rediscovered with the emergence of the Web 2.0 and Social Media. Dr. Paredes pointed out that government agencies have been investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence technologies such as speech recognition, real-time speech-to-text conversion, and multilingual machine translation in order to monitor and analyze large amounts of documents and detect security threats. All these technologies are data centric in that they focus on monitoring and analyzing large amounts of raw data. This approach, which is costly and extremely reliant on human post-processing, is severely impaired by the so-called data bottleneck. According to Dr. Paredes, this problem gets compounded when one factors in the growth of the Internet and its role as the medium over which most of this information circulates. SEPARI’s project proposes a complementary approach based on modelling and capturing user intent as a first step in the monitoring process. This approach focuses on the quality and not the quantity of the data and proposes to spend more effort on an initial step aimed at selecting what information to analyze. With this approach agencies like the ONR would be able to deal with the two main problems posed by conventional approaches: data relevancy and the so-called data bottleneck.

Commenting on this project proposal, Dr. Gruber said: "when used in concert with conventional approaches, the proposed system would contribute to increase the efficiency and the rate of conversion of raw data into valuable information that agencies and governments can immediately act upon." Rear Admiral Metcalf added: "the Internet security project proposed addresses one of the core problems that governments and organizations face today when trying to monitor and detect security threats that circulate over public networks like the Internet. This project is certainly of high strategic importance for the National Office of Global Maritime Situational Awareness."

Rear Admiral Landey also added that: “the approach to technology innovation and transfer implemented at SEPARI is quite novel in that all projects under development at SEPARI need to pass a phase of client qualification whereby client requirements are gathered and commercial impact is assessed at the very beginning of the innovation process.  This approach to technology innovation and transfer is quite novel not only in Latin America but also in other areas of the world where resource allocation to technology innovation and development is plentiful.  This customer-centric approach was one of the reasons why the Office of Naval Research felt comfortable with the decision of engaging the services of SEPARI in their first joint project”.

The members of the ONR delegation then visited several departments and laboratories at the Federico Santa María University of Technology, including the Department of Electronics, where they were received by the Director, Professor Agustín González, and by other faculty members and researchers of the areas of Power Electronics, Telecommunications, and Computing and Digital Systems of that department. They also visited the Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry of the Chemistry Department, led by Professor Francisco Cereceda, and the Dr. Daniel Alkalay Lowitt Center for Biotechnology, led by Professor Manuel Young.

During their visit to the university laboratories the members of the delegation learned details about different R&D projects being developed and had the opportunity to discuss some of the projects under development directly with the researchers involved.

After finishing their visit to the departments, Professor José Rodríguez, President of the Federico Santa María University of Technology and also President of the Board of Directors of SEPARI, joined the ONR delegation and hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony. At the ceremony, Professor Rodríguez and Rear Admiral William Landey did cut a ribbon honoring the official inauguration of the first joint project between the Office of Naval Research and the Federico Santa María University of Technology.

After this ceremony, President Rodríguez offered to his distinguished guests from the Office of Naval Research an official lunch at the “House of the President” on the university main campus in which other officers of the university and SEPARI also participated.

Jai-Son Ko. the ambassador for Taiwan stationed in Chile, and the general director of the economic and cultural office of Taipei, as well as Anita Shu-O Huang, the director of the economic and cultural division of Taipei visited the campus of the International Institute for the innovation of business "3ie," and the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria with the goal of studying the creation of a cooperative strategy with Asia and Taiwan in particular.

Given the current economical development, new technological innovation and implementation, as well as the incentives granted by the public and private sectors for the improvement of business in our country, work is being done to generate contacts in Asian countries, with the aim of creating business alternatives and technological cooperation.

Jai-Son Ko, Anita Shu-O Huang, Chancellor Jos� Rodr�guez P�rez of UTFSM, director of the 3ie institute V�ctor Aguilera, and the business enterprise unit coordinator Vania G�mez, with this concept in mind, met at the 3ie Institute in the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria campus.

With the objective of understanding the university and business activities that are carried out at USM and 3ie, the director of the institute detailed the activities of the respective unites of 3ie: Intel Motorola laboratory, Columbus school of enterprise, Technological enterprise incubator, Microsoft Centers, and VTR.

Vania G�mez said, "Chile has not properly put itself into the global system, and for that same reason, 3ie is interested in creating a relationship with China specifically in the fields of technology and enterprise."

Practical Course of Nanotechnology "Simulation outpost in nanoscales: Atoms, Materials and Devices". organized by Southeastern Pacific Research Institute, SEPARI, with Wolfgang Windl Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Ohio State University

With the objectives to know strategies, methods and software in advanced nanoscale simulation tools; the design of materials and nanoscales devices; to understand the reach and the roll that play the simulation of nanoscales tools to solve the challenges; and to apply examples of successful applications of this tools, and their potential roll in the development of additional applications, the Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies SEPARI had organized the 1st Advanced Technical Seminary this past July.

The course of "Simulation of Processes and Devices of Dimensions in Nanoscales", whose relators was Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Ohio State University, and of the Fraunhofer Institute of Germany, Wolfgang Windl, who also has been Chairman of the International Conference on Computational Nanoscience and is recipient of the 1998 and 1999 Patent and Licensing Awards from Los Alamos National Laboratory for his contributions to the molecular modeling code CLSMAN.

Nanotechnologies

The seminary was based on nanostructured interfaces and molecule-surface interactions of semiconductor device systems.

During his visit to SEPARI the Professor Windl emphasize to the importance and projections of nanotechnologies to the local and world wide economy and development, Design of nanoscale devices plays an important roll in diverse area of science and of engineering's, that delay was increased at levels such that are said originated, on the next decade, a new industrial revolution that changed almost all the aspects of our lives.

Ambassador Craig A. Kelly next to representatives in Chile, of the Departments of Commerce and Defense of United States, met with authorities of Southeastern Pacific Research Institute (SEPARI), to know details about the projects of R&D and technological transference that are running by SEPARI.

To know details about the projects of high technology that are developed by Southeastern Pacific Research Institute for Advanced Technologies, SEPARI, a commission led by the Ambassador of the United States in Chile, Craig A. Kelly, met with authorities of SEPARI and Universidad Federico Santa Maria, headed by its President, Jose Rodriguez.

Victor Aguilera, Director of SEPARI, explained that "the objective of the visit was to inform Ambassador about our projects and initiatives in which North American partners are involved. At the same time, we gave him details of our activities oriented to create a bridge of entailment between Valparaiso, and several institutions of Silicon Valley, which we already are developing joint activities with".

In this frame SEPARI's director stressed that "we would like to be able to collaborate with North American institutions and among other things to get access to R&D resources, materials and scientific support". USA is the country that invests more in Research and Development (R&D) in the world, and its Department of Defense (DoD) is indeed the organization who spends more resources in R&D and new technology discovery. To get in touch with the American Government, and specifically with its DoD, is a key objective for any institution that develops R&D of global impact. That's the reason why we show them our initial efforts and R&D projects".

"Up today we have sent two proposals to US Department of Defense Army Research Lab International Technology Center ITC, and both are in evaluation stage. One of them, propose to develop an autonomous ultra light robot using distributed high performance computing technologies (HPC) for a Stereovision Navigation System (3D) that is able agilely to detect both antipersonnel mines and unexploded ordnance. This proposal was co designed with Austec (www.austec.cl) a Chilean high technology start up specialized in robotics", he added.