UC Davis Chile

Global Affairs logoUC Davis Chile Life Sciences Innovation Center

A part of Global Affairs

(https://chile.ucdavis.edu/en)

UC Davis-Chile was established as a grant-funded non-profit foundation in Chile in 2015 with the goal of connecting Chilean industry and government agencies with the deep research resources of UC Davis. Bennett was the Principle Investigator and Founding Executive Director of UC Davis-Chile which has been funded by a $30M grant from the Chilean Economic Development agency, CORFO (www.corfo.cl) .  UC Davis-Chile is part of UC Davis Global Affairs and is governed by a Board of Directors comprised of UC Davis and Chilean Directors.

The role of UC Davis Chile is implemented by means of a collaboration model with the industry either by performing effective technology transfer processes to the industry starting from developments currently available in California (licenses and patent, start-ups) or by generating Research and Development (R+D) results with the support of UC Davis Chile, as well as local or international institutions.

In addition, UC Davis Chile seeks to facilitate access to knowledge, information and technologies available at UC Davis by means of technological, efficient and effective Extension activities to enable the industrial sector to acquire practices and technologies which improve their ability to innovate.

Some of the services offered by UC Davis Chile are:

  • Situation Analysis: exploration of the problems and/or business needs and prospection of the best existing solutions. Evaluation of the state of art and technological benchmarking may be performed with the assessment of a national or international expert.

  • Design and execution of applied R+D projects: initiatives to solve specific business problems through applied research, considering the development and testing of technologies and an appropriate plan of adoption and technological transfer. We articulate multidisciplinary teams, national and international.

  • Design and execution of technology adoption projects: projects to solve specific business challenges through the adoption and transfer of developed or preexisting technologies, considering the scaling process.

  • Specialized consultancies: assessments to enable the identification of appropriate solutions for companies and/or to support their implementation.

From science to solutions. Research that makes a difference

UC Davis Chile performs collaborative research in order to provide technological solutions. These may be determined by the industry, that is, they are “industry-driven”, or by strategic issues of national or international interest.

Although UC Davis Chile´s focuses of research and development are the agri-food and environmental areas, Davis´s campus covers all areas of knowledge, from medicine to aquaculture, through engineering and human ecology.

UC Davis Chile has laboratories in their offices in Providencia and in addition has access to the facilities of national and international partner institutions.

Some platforms in which UC Davis Chile is working on issues of research and development are:

Genetics and Genomics

cataclaudio

The technologies of massive DNA sequencing are being used to respond to a series of needs for characterization and identification of genes and organisms with industrial potential. UC Davis Chile, together with its partner institutions, has generated abilities and technologies which respond to a new perspective of the development of industrial processes and products.

As follows some initiatives being performed by UC Davis Chile:

Viticulture and Enology

viti

The wine industry is a highly relevant agricultural sector for California and Chile which continues to grow both in volume and production of premium wines. The quality and price of the wines are determined by a complex interaction between the genetics of the vine, soil conditions, climate, maturity, fermentation and aging. There are opportunities for science-based interventions at each stage of the wine production process in order to improve the final product and its economic value. Since Chile and California have similar conditions both in climate – the same grape varieties can be grown in both territories – as in production, they have the possibility to share information and research results.

UC Davis´s Viticulture and Enology is one of the founding departments of this university and is known for its technological contribution to California’s wine industry. The “Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building”, leads research in sustainable winemaking processes, such as carbon dioxide capture, water capture and reuse, as well as the use of alternative energy sources.  

Some initiatives of this R+D platform are:

Bioproducts

bioprods

The bioproduct’s objective is to replace or complement the chemical products which have been used in agriculture for decades. Chile, due to the enormous variety of its ecological systems from the most ancient desert in the world to the Antarctic, may have countless microorganisms –especially bacteria and fungi – which may help plants and crops to protect themselves against insects or pathogens (biocontrollers), to stimulate their growth (biostimulants) or to facilitate directly or indirectly the availability of nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorous and water  (biofertilizers).

In this platform UC Davis Chile is carrying out:

Agriculture and Natural Resources

Two of the great challenges of the agri-food sector are to generate more sustainable systems – an issue which has becoming increasingly evident in the face of climate change – as well as productive systems, considering that according to figures of the United Nations, every year the world population increases by 83 million inhabitants.  Therefore, UC Davis Chile is working on initiatives linked with Smart Agro and on solutions or adaptations to climate change.

Some initiatives of UC Davis Chile´s R+D platform are: