Universidad Industrial de Santander

UIS is one of the top research universities in Colombia, but getting familiarized and connected to some more international network initiatives was the highlight of this visit.

Thanks to Dr. Yeinzon Rodriguez, a High-Energy physicist focused primarily on Inflation-theory, I was introduced to the research and funding processes at UIS. Again much of the funding comes through ColCiencias, but as at the Universidad de Antioqua in Medellin, there were a lot of funding options directly through grants at UIS as well. Dr. Rodriguez is even able to support a post-doc from Italy, Dr. Fabio Briscese (this is the first active post-doc in physics that I've encountered anywhere so far in Latin America).

Meeting Dr. Luis Nunez, a Cuban-born, Venezuela-educated physicist with a very global bent, was inspiring. Dr. Nunez is the Academic Director of the RedClara network. RedClara is the principal organizer of Latin American NREN's (National Research and Education Networks), and among many initiatives that they help foster, they are actively implementing wide-band Internet connections in Universities throughout Latin America (through “academic” wires, as opposed to "commercial").
As part of his position with RedClara, Dr. Nunez travels around Latin America, forming lasting collaborations between researchers in all types of research fields, and connecting them through RedClara. Dr. Nunez also works with other more specialized collaborative platforms, such as HELEN (High Energy LatinAmerican-European Network), VAMDC (Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Center) and EELA ( E-Infrastructure shared between Europe and Latin America).


I learned a lot from our talk; from infrastructure and logistics, to limitations in technical resources. Dr. Nunez stressed the profound potential and desire to change and improve in the region. 


He was also in turn very interested in my ideas and objectives for forming a virtual collaborative research interface, and has offered to set me up with other active members of RedClara and related projects throughout Latin America. These contacts are essential for the success of this project.

SUE Caribe

What's going on at the public universities in northern Colombia is a testimony to vision, and an evident example of why what I'm determined to help develop is both desired and needed.

Sistema Universital Estatal de Caribe Colombiano (SUE Caribe) is a partnership between the seven major public Universities (Atlantico, Cartagena, Cesar, Cordoba, La Guajira, Magdalena, Sucre)  in the relatively underdeveloped northern states of Colombia (in comparison to the interior, which includes Bogota, Medellin and Cali).

These seven Universities decided to join forces to share resources to create previously inaccessible levels of higher learning and research. One such newly formed program, and the primary focus of this entry, is the "Maestria en Ciencias Fisica," a physics masters program.

Visits to the Universidad de Atlantica in Barranquilla, Universidad de Magdelena in Santa Marta, and the Universidad de La Guajira in Riohacha, generated some contacts and interest, but speaking with the director of the physics masters program, Dr. Cesar Orlando Torres Moreno at the Universidad Popular del Cesar, brought to light the ambition, energy and comprehensiveness of this initiative.

The stated objective of the program is to raise the level of scientific education and research skills in order to facilitate social, economic and academic development of the region and the country. It's the belief that well-prepared masters of physics, and eventually other disciplines through SUE Caribe, will both fortify industry and help generate a continuous cycle of building and improvement of educational standards at the coastal Colombian Universities.

Nationally accredited in 2006 (and in the process of being internationally accredited now), the physics masters program currently has 74 participating students between the seven Universities. Three standard courses are given at each University (electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics), but students are free to seek out mentors and elective courses at any of the seven Universities. In fact, students are given the option of finding mentors and research projects anywhere they wish, as long as they keep one local mentor at one of the seven SUE Universities.

Professors within SUE Caribe are often interchanged, and visiting professors from other Colombian and foreign institutions give seminars and courses, to better familiarize the students with available research areas, but also to help form and fortify collaborations amongst the professors themselves. The list of visiting professors to date is staggering, demonstrating a substantial international interest in the program, but visiting professors normally can only stay short periods of time due to the inability to continue their research projects while at the SUE universities.

The hope is that with the success and example of the physics masters program, SUE Caribe will form masters and doctoral programs in other basic science disciplines and mathematics. To date, a masters program in education, a doctoral program in environmental engineering, and a doctoral program in tropical medicine, have been formed through SUE Caribe and are up-and-running. The early stages of a doctoral program in physics are also taking shape. All have the same objective of sharing resources and interchanging personnel to create advanced programs and research projects that would otherwise be impossible at these Universities. I spoke with Dr. Lyda Castro, the director of the doctoral program in Tropical Medicine at the University of Magdalena in Santa Marta. While she acknowledged that there are still major limitations, especially funding for the students' research, she realizes that without SUE Caribe, much of her and her two current doctoral students' research, would be impossible.

There is another initiative, more in the idea stage but with a lot of support, worth mentioning. It's the ambition of Dr. Torres and others participating in the SUE Caribe program, that a centralized research institute can be formed that shares resources in all scientific disciplines in coastal Colombia. This institute would not only be for Colombians, but would be a center of research, development and education for students and researchers in Latin America that have suffered from a lack of resources and opportunity. A group of researchers from SUE Universities have a visit planned later this year to several Central American countries, in an attempt to understand how best to include them in this proposed research institute.

It was wonderful to see the ambition and progressiveness of these new programs and initiatives, but some limitations were also clearly evident. One was the prohibitive cost of pursuing a degree; it costs thousands of dollars per semester, which is money most Colombians, especially those just finishing a pre-grad degree, simply don't have. I met several students that wanted to participate in the masters program in physics, but had no way to pay, so were trying their best to find a foreign institute that offers scholarships (to date, ColCiencias, the Colombian science foundation, has been reluctant to give scholarships for advanced science degrees, and the Universities themselves appear to have a certain bureaucracy that makes lowering the costs or offering financial aid and scholarships a laughable topic).

Some other practical issues, such as the difficulty for students and professors to travel to take courses or develop research projects,  offers an opportunity to present how a centralized research and instruction platform, my project, could greatly help a program such as SUE Caribe.

Imagine an interface that allows an interactive environment for scientific research and teaching, live and virtual. A simulated research institute, if you will. Students can take classes at one University while seated at their home University. Professors can exchange ideas, data, software and publications with collaborators, and advanced students can seek out Professors for guidance. Conferences can be streamed virtually and offer online interactivity that would help develop collaborative relationships, and those collaborations could further be fostered by the same platform. This, in summary, is what we're talking about here for this project.

Now imagine this platform being accessible to a program like SUE Caribe. With their limited resources but a clear openness to connectivity, the benefits would be enormous. Students in Santa Marta could take a virtual course from Valledupar, while seeking out a tutor in Bogota or Madrid to work along with their mentor in Cartagena. The students and professors would also have access to more specialized courses and research groups from around the world, bringing their level to a more international standard. The higher level and better accessibility would make more students want to stay, greatly enhancing regional and national economic and academic development, SUE Caribe's stated purpose. The potential is limitless.