During this time, the branch won the “Crecimiento Sostenible” prize and the Power and Energy Society chapter won the “Caso de Éxito” prize.
<br>[[File:plab1.jpg| thumb| Puppy Lab at UTEC]]
Diego was trained as a University Innovation Fellow in Fall 2018, and attended the Silicon Valley meetup in March 2018. As a Fellow, he focused his work on the well-being and mental health care of students in college. That is why he founded UTEC Puppy Lab. Organization that promotes mental health and well-being through canine interaction.
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In 2018, he participated in IDDS International Developmentent Design Summit, initiative created by MIT D-Lab to co-design low-cost solutions to challenges faced by people living in poverty around the world. That same year, he was a finalist in the Disrupton Amazonia contest at UTEC, where he built a prototype of mobile laboratory to collect plastic from the Amazon River and transform it into useful products. In 2019, Diego was selected to participate in IAP-MIT Design of Technologies for the Production of Coffee in Colombia. They design new technologies for agriculture with a team of students from Harvard and MIT and coffee growers.<br>