COLLABORATION EPFL - UNIVALLE (CALI, COLOMBIA)

The biannual plan between Univalle and EPFL was initiated with Prof. Eduardo Sanchez in the 1980’s. Recently, it led to four consecutive biannual programs that allowed the mobility of over 100 students and researchers; it also led to over 80 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and supported the organization several workshops.

This project is jointly financially supported by CODEV (EPFL, 60%) and VRI (Vicerrectoria de Investigación) and ORI (Oficina de Relaciones Internacionales) (UniValle, 40%).

During the last two years we observed an increasing interest for young scientists that want to travel and work in Colombia. Indeed 7 students from the EPFL participated in projects at Univalle during summer, and for the first time of our history we couldn't accept all the candidates! 

Although most of our resources are invested into mobility for scientists, younger ones and less younger ones, the aim of this plan isn't only the formation or the career of one candidate, but to foster collaborations that in turn will allow to form more students, to create a snowball effect that will multiply the impact of the initial effort. In that respect the impact of students visiting Univalle has been invaluable to help strengthening the Colombian research groups.
The plan is supporting long term projects spanning a wide area from solar disinfection to coffee origin and building bioreactors. Interestingly, a growing fraction of the funds levered by these collaborations is coming from the industry, not only from Switzerland (Firmenich, Nespresso), but also from Colombia (Almacafé, the number one coffee exportation agency in Colombia).
Finally we are proud to announce that a fifth edition of this program will start soon and wish to conclude saying that countries like Colombia are promising for research, since the impact of every cent invested is very high.