Energy: International cooperation agreement between ENEA and UNIMINUTO

ENEA signed a collaboration agreement with the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UNIMINUTO).  This is the latest of a series of initiatives aiming to boost its International relations with Latin America countries.

ENEA recently signed an International Cooperation Agreement with the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UNIMINUTO), to develop joint research activities. UNIMINUTO is the biggest University system in Colombia, and collaborates with business, government and non-governmental organizations to provide fair access to high-quality educational services, particularly targeting lower-income and geographically isolated students, in over 80 locations and over 35 municipalities in the country.

The agreement will promote joint research activities, especially in (but not exclusive in) the area of renewable energies. This will  be eventually expressed in terms joint projects, personnel exchanges, training. A first implementing action will be focused to set the conditions to perform applied research in electric generation from natural renewable sources as well as training and training of human capital in skills necessary for managing  comprehensive clean energy systems.

Colombia is a country in continuous growth since few years and so does its research. Italian government dedicated a formal delegation in 2015, specifically focused on Agroindustry, Green Technologies, Biomedicals and Infrastrutures (including ICT). More exchanges and confrontation will come, and Research and Technological Development aspects will surely be of priority, as sustainable economic development in highly competitive world markets requires a direct engagement in the generation of knowledge and capacity building.

Italian imprint into hispano-american countries has always been relevant, but in the last few years relations have been overlooked and the Italian intention now is to catch up in terms of cultural and politic dialogue; it is in this policy framework that ENEA is working to increase and strengthen its scientific relations with LAcs,  by defining bilateral agreements that should legitimate and facilitate scientific collaborations, by joining research programmes and by actually implementing shared research.

In general  ENEA frequently hosts scientists from Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico on single research initiatives basis, but, to meet the need of a formal and more structured approach of collaborations with LAcs, a new wave of International Relations initiatives started recently; after signing a memorandum of understanting (MoU) between ENEA and the “Italy-Latino America Institute” (IILA) to better approach the whole geographical area, ENEA later joined the former Brazilian mobility programme “Ciência sem Fronteiras – CSF” and signed cooperation agreements with the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) in Brazil, with the Instituto Nacional de Eficiencia Energética y Energías Renovables (INER) in Ecuador, and now with UNIMINUTO.

On a similar path, also collaborations with the Universidade do Estado do Amazonas and Universidade Federal do Pará are in the making, for research on climate change, biodiversity, agrosystem and renewable energies.  Collaboration with Cuba is also very active, with  initiatives and studies for collaborations with NGOs and industry in ENEA’s main fields of R&D, in both terms of research and technological transfer. In particular, in the biomedical area, an important collaboration is for the production of vaccines that may extend soon to  most of the south American area (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,  Ecuador, Paraguay, Perù, Uruguay and Venezuela).

Thus, the “seedlings” has been done in the perspectives of more structured exchanges, of scientists and know-how, and collaboration are expected to flourish in the short-medium time frame.

(Article by Domenico De Martinis, ENEA International Relations Unit, domenico.demartinis@enea.it)

For more information:

UNIMINUTO