This is important! Colombian research has to be supported

Firstly, the great diversity of natural resources, biodiversity, and the mineral and water richness are both at the same time a blessing and a headache for Colombian people. Many Colombians have the same question: how to take advantage of all this in a sustainable way"

Rubén Darío Godoy, chemical engineer, affirms that one of the main problems is that the government has not defined development priorities that the country needs. Priorities are clear in some sectors, but in others, which are equally important, they priority is forgotten.

"This is the case of the petrochemical sector. Some decades ago, this was an incipient industry, but today it is completely reduced. The contradiction is that we import petrochemical supplies, which could be produced in the country, since we have these resources naturally in our territory," said Godoy.

The perfect example is the methanol, a type of alcohol used for biofuels, which is imported, although it is obtained from natural gas, an energetic resource that Colombia has in 12 main production fields.

"This is illogical. If we have the raw material and we need a final product, we should have an intermediate step, which is research. We have the potential to do it," asserts the chemical engineer from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

William Oquendo, a candidate to Doctor in Physics, affirms that Colombia can not keep on reproducing and buying science and technology from other parts of the world.

"Here, people sometimes copy things, but they are useless, since our geography, lands and materials are very different from those in other parts of the world. We can not expect, for instance, that road designs for soil from Chile, which are made with different rocks from those in Colombia, will have the same behavior here," explains Oquendo.

This young researcher is part of the Physics Systems Simulation Group of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, composed by a dynamic team of scientists, led by Professor Daniel Muñoz. All of them are focused on making instruments for development from basic sciences and applies physics.

"Research in Colombia has to be supported, since we have to find a way to apply that knowledge from other parts in our context. If we manage to redesign formulas, design our own materials and use our own findings, we could improve our development," affirms the researcher.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Villalobos, also a candidate for Doctor in Physics, asserts that new basic sciences have to be reconceived in the country.

"In many occasions, research in basic sciences is underestimated, since it does not provide entrepreneurs or the government results in short or mid term, however, this type of research is a priority for the country, since it brings the biggest advancements," mentioned Villalobos.

"For instance, at this moment we are using a very abstract geometrical computational program, which, at first, could not have practical applications in other areas. But we know that at a certain moment someone could have a different perspective to this tool and apply it to certain phenomenon of reality," explained the physicist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

The message from all the researches is: this is important! Colombian research has to be supported, because it is the key to competitiveness, development and the solution of our own problems, saving in importations and the generation of social richness.

Therefore, political and union leaders and, above all, the private sector have to look at the academy to use effectively the new law of Science and technology.