A Summit for the city
The 11th edition of the MIT City Science Summit, this summit of city science laboratories, will take place in October of next year. These are usually rather closed events, in which the various representatives of the laboratories relate their experiences to their peers, in a collective exercise of sharing knowledge to observe the same problems from other angles.
“But we want the Biobío Summit to be different. Our challenge will be to bring these laboratories closer to the community. To open our doors, show what we do, and explain why studying neighborhoods and their inhabitants can have a positive impact on people’s daily experience within the city. Thus, through this summit we will seek to show the value of data science and the use of technology to improve the decision-making processes that are directly or indirectly affecting the daily lives of the inhabitants of Greater Concepción.”
That’s our mission at City Lab Biobío
Fernando Pérez Barrientos,
Principal Director City Lab Biobío
Transformative Communities, new edition of MIT CIty Science Summit in Andorra, 2024.
Celebrating the ten years of the MIT city science network, Andorra, one of the first laboratories to be created, organized the global meeting of researchers focusing on three key areas for the city: constellation of metrics, transforming solutions into tools and future collaborations between laboratories of the network.
Fernando, Juan Eduardo, Helen, and Diego arrived in the Pyrenees and quickly connected with the rest of their peers who came from all over the world, including Taipei, Shanghai, Guadalajara, Hamburg, among others.
“This meeting is tremendous. Recognizing ourselves as part of this global MIT network, sharing common experiences with cities so different from ours, and communicating our ideas with world-renowned researchers opens up a world of possibilities, and our challenge is to bring back to Chile everything we can,” affirmed Helen de la Fuente in her dispatch for the lab, from Andorra la Vella, the city-country that for two days hosted the City Science Summit.
A meeting that clearly sets the trend in terms of scientific developments for the city, and which next year will have its epicenter in the Biobío region.
Diego Ramírez, the best keynote at the Andorra Summit on technological tools for city science.
Our very talented data scientist was recognized in Andorra for the best presentation in the workshop on technological tools for city science. “It is a tremendous honor to receive this recognition from our colleagues in the network, not only for myself, but it also demonstrates the value of what we have accomplished as a team. It is also a challenge to continue innovating and creating with more technologies that transform our cities.
City Lab Biobio visits the City Science Lab @ Gipuzkoa to deepen cooperation between the network
Immediately after participating in the MIT Summit Andorra, the team headed north of the Iberian Peninsula to connect with researchers from the City Science Lab @ Gipuzkoa. Based at the University of Navarra, the professionals shared their experiences with ours, finding common ground in the challenges that both labs address in their cities.
Researchers from the lab presented findings from studies and analyses of urban and traffic data in Ñuble at SOCHIGEO 2024
Yojans Cid, our data science expert, was responsible for spreading the word of the lab in Chillán, and upon returning to Greater Concepción, he highlighted that “representing part of the research work of the entire team in an academic setting of national and international scope is a great source of pride. Being able to share that effort with the university and scientific community motivates us to continue moving forward.
If you’ve only seen us on social media, this is your chance to get to know our lab! Book your visit on our website.
We published the form on our website to request a tour of the city science we have in cooperation with the MIT Media Lab.
The available dates are every Thursday, in the afternoon. If you are coming on behalf of a company, public institution, school, or university, this can be a good opportunity to coordinate an active partnership.
“Together with Miguel, Kent, and Luis from MIT City Science, we wanted to show why this emerging laboratory in Concepción has all the capabilities to deploy its city work in the face of various challenges both in Chile and in Latin America,” said Martín Andrade, executive director of Corporación Ciudades in his presentation at the MIT Museum, the central activity of Chile Innovation Day.
In front of a plethora of Chileans, scientists, innovators, authorities, and our country’s ambassador to the United States, the city science speakers highlighted the alliance with Chile Mass, enabling with their work the arrival of the MIT City Science group to Concepción, as well as the valuable connections that the national innovation hub in Cambridge makes possible.
In the closing remarks from Kent Larson, he commented that “(City Lab Biobío) …is an incredibly challenging and complex project, and I think they are doing a fantastic job there.”
Together with Radio Universidad de Concepción, we are talking with experts about fifteen topics related to the city and the experience of living in it. In this edition, we leave you with the chapters on Youth with Rodrigo Ganter and Urban Planning with Sergio Baeriswyl.
