Speakers
Ralph J. Hexter
Jorge Rojas
Dr. Jorge Rojas is Program Director for the Chile – UC Davis Partnership. He also currently serves as a Visiting Researcher in the International Law Programs, UC Davis School of Law, where he works on International Intellectual Property. As Program Director for the UC Davis-Chile Program, Dr. Rojas interacts with Chilean government agencies, universities and the private sector to facilitate educational exchange agreements and research collaborations with UC Davis. His research focuses on university research processes, international intellectual property and technology transfer. He has worked on intellectual property issues for UC Davis, public agencies, universities and the private sector in Latin America and Europe and has published on technology and intellectual property issues. He holds degrees in Accounting from the University of Concepcion and in Law from the University of Chile. He earned a Master’s Degree (LLM) from the UC Davis Law School in 2003 and a doctoral degree (JSD) from the UC Berkeley Law School in 2008. He was a civil servant in Chile from 1991 to 1998, focusing on agreements of international cooperation and higher education. From 1998 to 2002, he was a lawyer for Fundacion Chile. He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000 and currently holds an appointment as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chile.
Miguel Altieri
Miguel A . Altieri received a BS in Agronomy from the University of Chile and a Ph.D in Entomology from the University of Florida. He has been a Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley since 1981 in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management ( www.agroeco.org and www.cnr.berkeley.edu). Dr. Altieri served as a Scientific Advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development (CLADES) Chile an NGO network promoting agroecology as a strategy for small farm sustainable development in the region. He also served for 4 years as the General Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension Programme which aimed at capacity building on agroecology among NGOs and the scaling-up of successful local sustainable agricultural initiatives in Africa, Latin America and Asia In addition he was the chairman of the NGO committee of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research whose mission was to make sure thar the research agenda of the 15 International Agricultural Research Centers benefited the poor farmers of the. He also was Director of the US-Brasil Consortium on Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development (CASRD) an academic-research exchange program involving students and faculty of UC Berkeley, University of Nebraska, UNICAMP and Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina. Currently he is advisor to the FAO-GIAHS program ( Globally Ingenious Agricultural Heritage Systems) a program devoted at identifying and dynamically conserving traditional farming systems in the developing world. He is also the President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (www.agroeco.org/socla). He is the author of more than 200 publications, and numerous books including Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity, Pest Management in Agroecosystems and Agroecology and the Search for a Truly Sustainable Agriculture.
Kate Scow
Kate Scow if Deputy Director of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute and Director of the Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility at UC Davis, as well as professor in the Land, Air, Water Resources (LAWR) Department. She conducts research focused on the role of soil microorganisms in carbon and nitrogen cycling, decomposition of organic matter, and biodegradation of pesticides and organic pollutants.More information can be found here.
Felipe Salazar
Professor, researcher and deputy director at the Centre for Comparative Educational Policy, Universidad Diego Portales. He graduated in Economics from Universidad de Chile, and is currently a doctoral student at Leiden University (Netherlands). His research has moved from school choice to students and schools segregation, and recently, the influence of financial aid on higher education . Since 2009, Salazar has been the coordinator for the Higher Education Public Policies Consortium (formerly, Anillo Program for Higher Education Research) a group of leading researchers in Higher Education issues from five different Chilean universities. In this role, he acts as lead editor for the “Higher Education Public Policies Bulletin”, a bimonthly publication in the form of policy briefs aimed to inform policymakers and general public about leading trends; and also leads the organization of the Higher Education Research Congress, which it just had its third edition on August 2012. More information can be found here.
Maria Perez
Maria (Cuky) Perez is Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. Cuky completed her PhD in the Economics of Education program at Stanford University in 2012. She received her professional degree in Economics from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, and a Master’s degree in Economics at Stanford University. Her work has concentrated on the theoretical and empirical effects of performance-based pay for teachers. More information can be found here.
Juan Santos
Juan Manuel Santos is the co-founder and CEO at HeartVista, inc, a medical device company that provides Magnetic Resonance Imaging applications for diagnostic cardiac imaging and interventional MRI.
Before HeartVista, Juan was a Consulting Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where he developed novel applications for real-time MRI. He is the author of more than 20 journal articles, 100 proceedings and 5 patents. He has been the principal investigator on five NIH grants and co investigator in several others. Juan obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Catolica de Chile. More information can be found here.
Mike Leatherbee
Mike Leatherbee, is Assistant Professor of Innovation at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Advisory Board Member of Start-Up Chile, and Ph.D.(c) at Stanford University’s Management Science and Engineering Department. He has been personally involved in innovation from the vantage point of an entrepreneur, a professor, a public-policy designer, and a researcher. In 2003 he was co-founder and CEO of Yx Wireless, one of Chile’s emblematic technology ventures. After successfully growing the company into Latin America, in 2009 he was invited to become Assistant Professor of Innovation at the School of Engineering of Universidad Católica, where he designed a course on Technological Entrepreneurship, a Minor of Innovation, co-designed an executive Masters of Innovation, and led the creation of a strategic alliance between Universidad Católica, Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and Ministerio de Economía de Chile. In 2010 he was invited to become Secretary General of Start-Up Chile’s advisory board, one of the recently world-famous public policies–which he helped to design. He is currently researching the impact of public policies on entrepreneurial behaviors. More information can be found here.
Blas Tomic
Blas Tomic is an economist, engineer, investigator, consultant and chilean politician. Currently he is the Executive Director of Fundación Imágen de Chile. He earned his Industrial civil engineering degree from Universidad de Chile, and a Ph.D. in Economic Development from University of Sussex, England. He has developed his career in public and international organizations, including the Chilean National Copper Corporation (Codelco), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal), the Regional Program for Employment (Prealc) and the Interamerican Development Bank (BID). More information can be found here.
Moderators
Nicolas Bambach
Nicolas Bambach (MSc., Agr.Eng.), Ph.D. Student at University of California, Davis – Atmospheric Science Program, Fulbright Scholar. Currently, his research is focused on Land – Atmospheric Processes in Mediterranean Ecosystems. He also has experience on topics related to climate change impacts on agriculture, water resources, forestry, and native ecosystems. In the last years he has been involved in several projects that try to introduce Climate Change as a main component of the decision making process in different sectors. He has worked as a Specialist Consultant for ECLAC – UN (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), Chile’s National Environmental Commission (CONAMA), The Latin American Technical Cooperation Network on National Parks, other Protected Areas and Wildlife, FAO, UN, and for internationals NGO’s such as The Nature Conservancy – TNC and Conservation International.
Felipe Aburto
Felipe Aburto (MSc., Agr.Eng.) is a Ph.D. candidate at University of California, Davis – Soil and Biogeochemistry and a Fulbright Scholar since 2009. His dissertation work is focused on weathering and landscape processes in glaciated environments. His main research interest is on understanding how soils evolve in natural environments and the effects that human activities have in soil properties end ecosystem services. As a pedologist he has studied soils in various environments, carrying out studies in particularly sensitive regions such as the Atacama Desert and the Chilean Patagonia. Felipe is currently associated to the Department of Soil and Engineering of the University of Chile.
Erin Coghlan
Erin Coghlan graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2006 with a B.A. in Political Science. She spent three years working for MDRC, a nonprofit social policy research group, before starting the doctoral program in Education Policy at UC Berkeley in 2011.
Mayra Feddersen
Attorney from Diego Portales University, Chile. Researcher at the Human Rights Center and for the Annual Report on Human Rights in Chile, Faculty of Law, UDP, Chile. During 2006 and 2009 she served as Assistant Professor of the Human Rights Clinic. She was also in charge of the courses on Legal Analysis and Strategic Litigation in the Inter-American Human Rights System. Since July 2010, she is pursuing graduates studies at the University of Berkeley, California. Her main interests are immigration, law and emotions and transitional justice.
Gonzalo Valdes
Gonzalo Valdés is pursuing a PhD in Organization Studies in the Department of Management, Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He is broadly interested in the impacts of technology adoption on public and private organizations. His research has focused on studying subjects such as: ICT implementation and technological maturity in public agencies (electronic/digital government), process improvement in small and medium-sized IT companies, and empirical/experimental software engineering (in software development teams). His main goal is to explore such subjects from an organizational perspective, and to be able to integrate this view with others that might provide complementary models/solutions to explain/solve the same phenomena/problems (technical, sociological, economic, etc.). Prior coming to Stanford, Gonzalo worked as an instructor and researcher at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (UTFSM) and University of Valparaíso in Chile. He holds a M.Sc., a B.Sc. and an Engineering degree in Information and Computer Science (Informatics) from UTFSM.