Travel Grants October 2018 – March 2019

Institutions:  Universidad Nacional de San Martín and Leeds Business School

Visit Focus: The subject of this collaboration relates to the financing of clean energy and environmentally-sustainable investment. Argentina has an energy-consumption matrix focussed on fossil fuel and has recently become a net importer of fuel.  Reconverting to an energy matrix with a high preponderance of clean energy needs to take in consideration two aspects:

a)      The Argentina financial system is small

b)      Most of the inputs for reconversion are imported

Therefore, a discussion is needed regarding how to develop a financial system that supports domestic-led clean energy reconversion and environmentally-sustainable investment.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán and De Montfort University

Visit Focus: Energy poverty is a general issue for those living in social housing and energy efficient housing is important both to reduce the impacts of this on tenants and to reduce the carbon footprint of the housing stock.

The visit will explore collaboration opportunities for comparing the energy performance of social housing in two countries (UK and Argentina) and identifying best practices for cross learning. Future collaboration will include developing a proposal for a detailed multi-national study of sustainable energy solutions in social housing that will support strategies for the reduction of energy use and enhancement of the user comfort through co-creation and shared vision of different stakeholders

Institutions: Instituto Balseiro, Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica and Cardiff University

Visit Focus:  The collaboration will focus on developing new integrated photonic devices at Cardiff University, which will be tested within optical telecommunications systems at Balseiro Institute. This will help Cardiff to test their devices in a system and Balseiro Institute to test a new generation of devices and systems. Furthermore, the project fosters the potential for the eventual commercialization of products or property rights on the ideas and devices under investigation.

Institutions: Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE) and University of Exeter

Visit Focus: The aim of this project is to develop sustainable bio-hydrometallurgical processes for the recovery of lithium from brines and electronic wastes. To achieve this we aim to develop processes using acidophilic and halophilic bacterial consortia, isolated from salt plains, with great potential in acidic extraction processes (bioleaching). At the same time, residual wastes will be assessed in order to minimize the environmental impact.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de las Artes and University of Bristol

Visit Focus: This collaboration seeks to develop innovative research and outreach activities in the field of Latin American cinema and visual cultures. It will do so by mobilising a range of interdisciplinary frameworks, such as gender studies, ecological perspectives and social theory. The visit will investigate cinema’s potential to act as a force for social inclusion and widened access to educational networks in contemporary Argentina. The subsequent collaboration will aim to establish community cinema associations in marginalised urban areas, involving municipal government and local NGOs, with a particular focus on gender equality in access to the arts.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de la Plata and University of East Anglia

Visit Focus: For every generation there is a defining moment, and in Argentina this moment is the dramatic economic decline and major socio-cultural challenges of this century, such as limitations of labour insertion, confronting past abuses and gender inequality. This project starts from the proposal that one vital way to help Argentina is via education, specifically via language teacher education. Currently no policy exists on how to support teachers to make connections between their discipline and Argentina´s social welfare and economic development. This collaboration aims to do exactly this, embedding employability in the curriculum to enable graduates to make significant contributions to their communities.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto and Cranfield University 

Visit Focus: Climate change factors will impact on disease and pest invasion on the most important crops grown worldwide. Affected crops include cereals such as wheat and maize, amongst others. Growth and mycotoxin production may be affected in the context of climate change, principally due to higher temperatures and increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. The main objective of this visit is to obtain information on the effects of interacting conditions on growth and mycotoxin production of important toxigenic fungi. This information will be relevant to aspects of food security and food safety.

Institutions: Instituto de Hidrología de Llanuras “Eduardo Usunoff” and University of Manchester

Visit Focus: The research topic is the evaluation of the groundwater quality in an experimental plot in the Pampeano aquifer which is naturally contaminated with arsenic from the Pampas Plain (Tres Arroyos, Buenos Aires, Argentina). The objective of this collaboration is to analyze the origin and mobility of arsenic based on the hydro-chemical characteristics of geomorphologic conditioned flow zones. Mutual collaboration is based on specific research in arsenic-rich aquifers and mitigation strategies for water supply management.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and University of Nottingham

Visit Focus: The visit aims to build a binational research team focussed on art as a means for social transformation. The ultimate objective is to develop a joint project to analyse experiences of collective production in video and theatre – both in Argentina and the UK – used as a means of social intervention.

Institutions: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán and Newcastle University 

Visit Focus: The purpose of this visit is to work out collaboration mechanisms to accelerate the speed and quantity of scientific software production as well as to improve the quality of the software produced in both countries.

Scientific software engineering is an area not often taught in higher education institutions. Particularly in Argentina and Latin America more widely, few junior scientists have the opportunity to formally study subjects such as computational modelling, data mining and scientific programming languages. The collaboration will: exchange best practice experience in scientific software engineering between the two institutions; identify detailed technical needs, gaps and opportunities that could be jointly tackled between UK and Argentine scientific software engineers; develop a plan of activities to deliver actionable change that could benefit the scientific software engineering community in both countries.

Institutions: Universidad José C Paz (UNPAZ) and University College London (UCL)

Visit Focus: This visit will focus on analysis of the potential of conducting joint comparative judicial research.  It will also bring the experience of UCL´s Judicial Institute to help UNPAZ to pioneer teaching in judicial studies, particularly in studies with an empirical element.  The collaboration aims to highlight the importance of conducting judicial studies in Argentina, to analyse aspects of the Anglo-Saxon/common law judicial system, and to examine how these could be useful to improve Argentina´s judiciary.

Institutions: Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (UTN) and University of Surrey 

Visit Focus: CO2, as an undesirable by-product of biogas production, causes serious problems such as corrosion and greenhouse gases emission contributing to climate change. This collaboration focuses on producing CO2 free biogas, and the conversion of CO2 into value-added products. Through interaction between researchers and stakeholders, the project seeks to enable future biogas valorisation projects that will impact on the social and economic development of Argentina.