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Press release
The CNRS opens its first bureau in Latin America | |||
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Paris, October 25, 2002 |
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| Geneviève Berger, general director of CNRS, Alain Le Gourriérec, France’s ambassador to Chile, and Eric Golès, President of Conicyt (Comision nacional de investigacion cientifica y tecnologica, Chile), inaugurated on October 25, 2002 CNRS’s regional bureau in Santiago, Chile. This is the organization’s first such branch in South America. The new structure will cover the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) as well as Brazil. This is CNRS’s tenth foreign bureau; Roger Frety has been appointed bureau chief. During her visit to Latin America, Geneviève Berger met with Ricardo Lagos, President of the Republic of Chile. They expressed their mutual desire to improve Franco-Chilean scientific cooperation, most notably through the creation of joint international units that would enable Chilean scientific teams to participate in European programs. The establishment of a CNRS branch office in South America is essential for developing and consolidating real scientific networks of cooperation between CNRS’s laboratories and those of the countries belonging to the Southern Cone and Brazil. The creation of this new bureau also corresponds to a desire of South American countries, which seek greater participation in Europe’s highly reputed networks. The CNRS has long maintained a special relation with the Chilean scientific community. In fact, an agreement was singed in 1991 with Conicyt to develop common research programs in the following fields: materials, mathematics, geology, hydrology, genetics, physics, computer science and astronomy (Chile uses 10% of the observation time at the European Very Large Telescope, built on Mount Paranal). In 2000, Conicyt and the CNRS created the Mathematical Modeling Center, a joint international unit (UMI). The center devotes its research to solving complex problems that its industrial partners encounter, particularly those associated with the mining industry, one of the mainstays of the Chilean economy. The unit also conducts research in areas of transportation, climate, and genomics. The president of Conicyt, Eric Golès, was a CNRS researcher for six years. The creation of a joint research unit in marine biology, with applications in agrochemistry and pharmacology, is being discussed by the Roscoff biological station (CNRS-Université Paris 6) and the Center for Advanced Studies in Biology and Biodiversity (CASEB) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago (PUC). Press contact
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