School:Universidad de los Andes Chile

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Logo UANDES.jpg


Overview

Universidad de los Andes, also known as UANDES, is a non-profit catholic University located in Santiago de Chile. It was founded on September 8th, 1989 by a group of academic professionals and outstanding businessman. It follows the actual Chilean Higher Education Legislation not only in the way they function but also in the way they teach. The university's original purpose was: “to elaborate an organic and universal synthesis of the human culture, that integrates the dispersion of the specialties in the radical unity of the truth, enlightened and invigorated by the Catholic faith”.

CAMPUS UANDES.jpg

Universidad de los Andes´ main purposes are:

  • Academic Training
  • Research and Innovation
  • Outreach and Relationship with Society

Members:

  • Academic Staff: 1,448 professors
  • Students: +10,100
  • Undergraduates: +8,900
  • Postgraduates: + 15,900

Campus

The Universidad de los Andes has a 52-hectare campus which is located at the bottom of the Cordillera de los Andes. Large green areas coexist with spaces for teaching and research, including sports and recreation, culture, and spiritual assistance. The campus infrastructure and layout aim to promote a serene study environment and a natural setting conducive to intellectual creativity.

The campus features nine buildings: Central, Humanities, Sciences, Library, El Reloj, Mecano, Engineering, ESE Business School, and the complex formed by the Center for Biomedical Research and Innovation and the Teaching and Simulation Unit (CiiB-UDS), in addition to the Engineering Research Center and UANDES Lab, totaling over 76,000 square meters of constructed space. These buildings house classrooms, laboratories, a library, offices, meeting rooms, as well as auditoriums, two grand lecture halls, an honor hall, and an amphitheater

Promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship

Universidad de Los Andes has several courses, programs and tedtalks about innovation and entrepreneurship. Courses like Design Thinking, Space creating, Laboratories of innovation, Entrepreneurship growth, among others.

There are different activities that promote I&E in "Uandes". One of them is a competition that takes part every year, called “The Challengers”. During this contest, students from Business, Service Management, Engineering, and high school students, create different projects and present them in front of a jury. The winners get a finance fund in order to start their prototype project and an all-paid trip to an international destination.

The University also has programs like “Cantera Uandes” and “Incubadora Uandes”(incubator) that promote Social Innovation creating new social projects. At the same time, there is the “Dirección de Innovación UANDES” (Innovation Center) which is the head of I&E at the institution, where you can get assessment and funding for your ideas and projects.

Students from different careers create theme days like "UANDES Innovation Day, from Service Management Faculty.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship is also aplied in volunteer activities in Uandes.

The innovative mindset grows exponentially throughout the university and gains more and more followers.

Encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship

Today at Universidad de los Andes there are two powerful organisms with the function of promoting innovation and entrepreneurship.

In the first place, there is the “Centro de Innovación Docente” (“Faculty Innovation Center”), which provides financing and support to teachers that have a project in mind, so they can develop it. As there is this support for teachers, they are the ones who participate and live mostly I&E activities at the University. For this reason, these two topics are more promoted around faculty members than students.

On the other hand, there is the CIIB (Centro en Innovación e Inteligencia Biomédica) (“Biomedical intelligence and Innovation Center”) where students can carry out projects if they’re coursing a science or health degree. Although students have developed great social projects at the University, these are aimed at helping people rather than innovation itself. Therefore, the university is offering an Innovation Minor, experiential and theory courses of I&E in different careers like Business, Engineering, Nursing, and Service Management (ADS school).

The University also has the first place in Chilean innovation, but this award has been allocated to the university as an institution. So this means the university by itself is innovative, but not necessarily its students.

Actively supporting the university technology transfer function

The technological transfer is defined as a concept where “Research transforms money into knowledge … technology transfer transforms knowledge into money.” (Geoffrey Nicholson, father of the Post-It).” https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4policy/technology-transfer/what-technology-transfer_en Universidad de los Andes encourages this technical support only to those who have Engineering and Business courses (lab, external projects, etc). Those who are not focused on these particular studies do not receive this support. However, they tend to always keep up to date with their technology to promote and enhance even more each student's knowledge. Furthermore, Universidad de los Andes has reached out to different colleges around the world and has, throughout the years, developed partnerships that embrace innovation on campus. To name a few we have from Belgium, Australia, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and many more.

Moreover, in 2024 the "Open Lab" project was inaugurated. This project aims to significantly increase institutional capacities to develop and manage research and innovation through an integral model that allows addressing the challenges of the social, economic, and productive environment from the link with society and its territorial environment. Develop a strategy that integrates different actions to integrate the university in the model of public engagement with research (Universidad de los Andes, 2024).

Facilitating university-industry collaboration

Universidad de Los Andes promotes an innovative ecosystem through external relations. One example of it is the huge number of international relations the institution has to establish innovative alliances. For instance, Stanford University and their UIF Program.

Innovation Direction, a department in Uandes, engages students and faculty I&E ideas and helps them grow and contact mentoring programs, source founding and other help necessary to go to market.

Engaging with regional and local economic development efforts

In order to engage with regional and local economic development, Universidad de los Andes promotes the following initiatives.

In the first place, the institution is part of the FDI (Fondo de Desarrollo Institucional) “National Fund for Institutional Development”, a government's initiative that offers to fund different projects that create faculty members and higher education students in the country.

At the same time, the university has a department called Vida Universitaria (University´s Life), where you can get funding for your projects, but only if they are willing to support the idea and encourage participating in Startup Chile.

The university also has funding resources related to external and internal support from “Centro de Investigación UANDES” (Research Center).

More information

Related Link

Student Priorities

Universidad de los Andes, Chile Student Priorities

Fellows 2020

Fellows 2021

Fellows 2022

Fellows 2023

Fellows 2024

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