Weekly Seminar: "Opportunities for CTTC in Chile"

According to the World Economic Outlook Database of 2012, the economy of Chile is ranked as one of the top growing economies and is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations. In the current European economic scenario, where the monetary crisis forces the countries to dramatically reduce their science budget, the exploration of new funding sources for research centers and universities has become a priority. In 2007, the CTTC signed a collaboration agreement with the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana (UTEM) of Santiago de Chile thanks to a lecturer stay of Dr. Carles Fernández-Prades. In January 2013 we have taken up the activities with a short visit of Dr. Javier Arribas to UTEM and their associated research group "Programa de Prospectiva e Innovación Tecnológica (Protein Lab)". In the first part of this talk we present an overview of the activities carried out and potential joint research opportunities. In the second part of the talk we present a personal experience and some technical details acquired at an unexpected visit to the recently inaugurated Atacama Large Millimetric and Sub-millimetic Array (ALMA) facilities. ALMA is an international project between Europe, the United States, Canada, East Asia and the Republic of Chile. It consists of an array of 66 radio telescopes located at 5300 meters of altitude in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Costing more than a billion US dollars, it is the most expensive ground-based radio telescope in operation.