The objective of this meeting was to publicize the initiatives and opportunities that are developed around the two concepts, in the different units of the ULS.

With a high participation of academics, researchers and officials from the different units of the University of La Serena, the first internal work day on “Data Science and Big Data” was carried out, which is related to different direct actions with information and high volumes of data generated by the institution.

During the day, managers and academics spoke, among them, the Director of the Information and Computing Center, Mg. Andrés Moya, who highlighted the great advances that the University has made in this issue and, above all, regarding information security, since the ULS is the first public university in the State that formed the information security committee.

"We have managed to form the first Information Security Committee of Chilean universities, this concept does not exist in any other higher education institution, everyone has what is called data protection (...) The University is going to begin to establish the protocols "before any event and will address official strategies to safeguard this information," Moya said in his speech.

Regarding the holding of this conference, the Vice-Rector for Research and Postgraduate Studies, Dr. Eduardo Notte, pointed out that “as a research policy we have focused research; However, there are emerging focuses according to the needs of the territory and where we are inserted, which is why we are involved with Big Data and Data Science, since researchers use a lot of data that must be transformed into valuable information for those who are interested. Since 2017, a group was formed to begin the application of some technologies that have given good development, and getting together today is very valuable.”

The institution, as a “complex” university, must stimulate the development of activities that go beyond teaching, placing emphasis on innovation along with the development of new technologies, promoting different areas of research. And it is from there that the concepts of Big Data and Data Science came to stay in the institution.

The increase in data produced by research, in the opinion of experts, is an important matter to address, and not only as an institution, but as a territory. Hence the relevance of this first meeting, which makes projects related to these topics visible and also allows the different initiatives to be socialized.

The activity was organized by the Vice-Rector for Research and Postgraduate Studies of this university in collaboration with the Research and Development Directorate, Data Science group and the Strategic Development and Quality Directorate, within the framework of the Mineduc BigData ULS1895 Project.

Written by Patricia Castro, DirCom