OTL UdeC opens the 2022 call for the Science with Impact Awards on Social Sciences, Humanities and Education

This Monday, September 5, the period to present projects for recognition began. Science With Impact, in the category Social Sciences, Humanities and Educationaward organized by the Transfer and Licensing Office of the University of Concepción (OTL UdeC).

The space seeks to highlight UdeC academics who, based on new knowledge, provide solutions to different problems that affect the community, and through mass use, generate positive change. The initiative is part of the Science with Impact Awardsborn in 2017, which recognize the contribution of projects that advance towards the transfer of knowledge and technologies from laboratories to society and the productive sector.

The Social Sciences, Humanities and Education category seeks to make visible fields that do not always commercially transfer the results of their research, but which reach the community thanks to various dissemination and massification strategies. In this regard, the executive director of OTL UdeC, Andrea Catalan Wolves, pointed out: “We want to encourage researchers who develop new knowledge as a solution to public challenges, to participate in the “Science with Impact” Community. The OTL not only works with technologies but also with new knowledge that, through different strategies, can generate the desired impact”.

In this sense, the activity responds to the pillars of the University of Concepción, whose desire is to develop new knowledge from curiosity, and at the same time, respond to the needs of the country and the world today.

“The University values ​​science with an impact on social areas, humanities and education, which respond to the transversal needs of society. Since there are no systematic mechanisms to raise these impacts, that is why we request that they be presented in a way to have better evidence that allows us to value this”, said the Vice-Rector for Research and Development, Dr. Andrea Rodríguez Tastets.

The perspective of the human and social sciences

In general, the transfer is usually related to products or technologies that are destined for companies or new ventures. Nevertheless, the focus of the transfer can also be on solutionsservices or methodologies that mean a contribution to social problems.

The Director of Development and Innovation, Jorge Carpinelli Pavisich, highlighted: “Science-based innovation and the transfer of its results to society is not the heritage of some specific disciplines, commonly recognized as “hard sciences”. We hope and require, for the benefit of all, that these activities are valued and developed by academics who, from their knowledge, skills and methods of the social sciences and the humanities, can contribute with solutions that contribute to the well-being of society. society”.

An example of them are the winning projects of the 2021 version, such as the “Lectum” project, which is a standardized and validated test to assess reading comprehension in the school system, led by Bernardo Riffo Ocares, of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts. The team was also the winner. by Mabel Urrutia Martinezof the Faculty of Education, with Neurosciences Applied to the Classroom, and lastly, the “Protocol of action for attention in justice with a gender and sexual diversity approach”, in charge of Ximena Gauche Marchetti of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences.

The call will be open until September 30. The bases can be found on the OTL UdeC website and the application form can be completed online at this link.