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- Promoted by Prof. Eduardo Vera, a researcher at the Universidad de Chile’s CMM, this bilateral collaboration has been consolidated and has expanded its areas of impact.
The Chile-Japan Academic Forum is an initiative that began a decade ago under the leadership of researcher Dr. Eduardo Vera from the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) at the Universidad de Chile.
It is currently promoted by five universities from both countries: the University of Chile, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, the University of Concepción, Kyoto University, and the University of Tokyo. On this occasion, it brought together almost 200 people, of whom around 60 came from our country.
Among the authorities who headed the Chilean delegation were the rector of the University of Chile, Prof. Rosa Devés Alessandri, the dean of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Prof. Francisco Martínez Concha, and his counterpart from the Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Miguel O’Ryan Gallardo, as well as the director of the CMM, Prof. Héctor Ramírez Cabrera. Also present were the Vice-Rectors for Research at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the University of Concepción, Prof. María Angélica Fellenberg and Andrea Rodríguez, respectively.
Over the past ten years, the Chile-Japan Academic Forum has established itself as a crucial space for interdisciplinary collaboration between experts from both countries, evolving significantly and adapting to new research needs and opportunities. The fifth edition of the meeting was held in Kyoto on September 29.
Prof. Vera, one of the main promoters of this event and chair of the 2025 edition of the forum, highlights its importance as a platform for interaction and knowledge exchange. Throughout its ten years, the workshop has maintained its structure of two days of plenary talks and two days of specialized workshops, inviting mainly, but not exclusively, participants with already established collaborations.
Evolution and new areas of collaboration
The forum included established workshops such as those on astronomy, health, engineering, and seismology (now merged with climate change, disasters, and Earth sciences), as well as new ones. The social sciences and architecture sessions are examples of this expansion. The architecture workshop, now in its second year, has been particularly successful thanks to the fruitful collaboration between the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Chile and the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo, a relationship that has been maintained for four years.
Prof. Vera highlights the differences in the approach to architecture in Japan, where it is part of the engineering faculty and features highly advanced technological elements, such as innovation in materials and a highly digitized industry. This gap offers, he explains, “interesting future opportunities” for the CMM, which can contribute its expertise in data analysis to the convergence between architecture and engineering, materials, construction, and structure, promoting integrated design.
Another “very important and very relevant” area of convergence, he said, is that between the health sciences and the engineering sciences, a process accelerated by the pandemic and the digital transformation of health.
The University of Chile has made a significant effort in this area, as evidenced by the presence of the deans of Engineering and Medicine in the Chilean delegation that participated this year. In Japan, this convergence has reached a radical point with the merger of a large technological university and a health sciences university, giving rise to the Institute of Science Tokyo, a development that Prof. Vera hopes will enhance collaboration between medicine and engineering.
CMM and interdisciplinarity
The Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile has played a key role in these international forums due to its interdisciplinary nature, applying data analysis methodologies, supercomputing, big data, and, more recently, artificial intelligence to a wide variety of fields. Six researchers from the CMM actively participated in this forum, which was attended by a total of 26 people from various faculties of the University of Chile.
In this regard, CMM Director Dr. Héctor Ramírez highlighted that “this forum has allowed us to deepen existing collaborations and explore new ones. At the CMM, we are building bridges with the participating Japanese institutions, with particular interest in the emerging relationship with the Institute of Science Tokyo on issues of health and engineering.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Alejandro Maass commented that this forum allows us to “strengthen existing ties with colleagues in Japan, in our case, colleagues from NTT with whom we are conducting a project on mathematical modeling of metabolism in algae, and, on the other hand, to open up new collaborations.”
“During this visit, we had the opportunity to deepen our collaboration with the group led by Hiro Ogata at Kyoto University, a world leader in giant viruses. We hope to be able to collaborate in our efforts in this area associated with samples we obtained in the ocean,“ explained Prof. Maass, who co-organized the workshop on seismology, risk, and climate change, where he also gave a talk on ”local efforts to understand changes in microorganism communities in response to climate fluctuations from the perspective of gene regulation.”
Dr. Francisco Förster, for his side, highlighted that the forum’s thematic sessions “delved into research in different areas, such as astronomy, and the conclusions of each session were presented in plenary sessions.”
The co-founder of ALeRCE gave a talk at the astronomy workshop about the Chilean broker, which, he said, “has an active community of users in Japan, where there are several collaborators working in the area of supernovae and other transient phenomena in astronomy.”
“Collaboration between Chile and Japan in the area of supernovae has been going on for more than a decade, with five bilateral collaboration funds from the Japanese government awarded since 2015,” added Prof. Förster on the context of binational collaboration in this area of knowledge.
International dialogue and inspiring reflections
The Chile-Japan Forum has not only facilitated academic collaboration, but has also created a unique opportunity for interaction among Chilean academics themselves, who spend a week together, fostering an environment for discussion isolated from the noise of daily contingencies. This has led to very interesting conversations between architects, civil engineers, and health groups.
“All these interdisciplinary encounters are extraordinarily valuable because they make people step outside their ‘square meter’ a little and better understand their place in the overall context,” he said.
In this regard, Prof. Eduardo Vera highlights the inspiration offered by Japan as a society: a very modern country that deeply values its history and culture, achieving a remarkable balance between the past and the future. This understanding of the country’s cultural identity, according to Vera, is an example for Chile in its search for a “clear north” as a nation.
Finally, Vera emphasizes that this forum was not just another conference, but had a clear purpose. “The plenary talks, such as the one offered by the University of Chile on the concept of design in a very broad sense, beyond the graphic or aesthetic,” he said, “sought to highlight the importance of this discipline in the conception of any complex system in engineering, architecture, medicine, and even any other area.”
Por Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM Communicationes.
Photographies: Nori Takahashi.
Posted on Oct 30, 2025 in News
