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- Alonso Bustos, Estefanía Olivares, and Benjamín Venegas completed international research stays while they were still undergraduate students.
Three graduates of the Mathematical Civil Engineering program at Universidad de Concepción (UdeC) will begin their doctoral studies in the coming months at prestigious foreign universities: Alonso Bustos Barría at George Mason University (GMU) in the United States; Estefanía Olivares Zamora at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada; and Benjamín Venegas Solís at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Previous international stays
All three conducted their thesis research in the area of numerical analysis of partial differential equations, under the guidance of faculty members from both UdeC and UCSC, as well as international collaborators: Manuel Solano Palma (UdeC) and Sander Rhebergen (University of Waterloo, Canada), in Estefanía’s case; Sergio Caucao Paillán (UCSC) in the case of Alonso; and Snorre Christiansen (University of Oslo, Norway) in the case of Benjamín; which allowed them to undertake research stays at foreign universities while still undergraduate students.
In the cases of Benjamín and Alonso, they completed a two-month stay last summer at the Fairfax campus of George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia, United States, thanks to an exchange agreement arranged by Prof. Gabriel N. Gatica of UdeC and his GMU counterpart Harbir Antil. Benjamín had also previously completed a stay at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Canada in February and March 2024, arranged by Gatica himself, with his counterpart at SFU being Professor Nilima Nigam.
Meanwhile, during September and October 2024, Estefanía completed a stay at the University of Waterloo in Canada, arranged by Prof. Solano and his colleague at the North American institution, Sander Rhebergen. Professors Gatica and Solano are also researchers at the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) housed at Universidad de Chile.
Estefanía Olivares Zamora.
Having participated in an international exchange during her undergraduate studies, Estefanía explained, “it had a significant influence” on her decision. “My international mobility experience was very meaningful because it allowed me to step out of my comfort zone, learn about other ways of studying, and interact with people from different places. It was a very enriching experience and also gave me more confidence to imagine myself studying outside Chile”.
“After that experience”, she elaborated, “I was left with a passion for continuing to explore new academic and cultural environments, and I think this greatly influenced my decision to apply for a PhD abroad”.
In Alonso’s case, he explained that the stay under Prof. Antil’s supervision allowed him to “learn about the research lines being developed there, as well as interact with the group of students and postdocs. The academic atmosphere and the strong research focus made my experience very positive. For this reason, when the time came to apply to PhD programs, the option of George Mason University emerged naturally”.
In this regard, Benjamín stated that, during his stays at SFU and GMU, “I learned a lot.” Regarding his first experience, he noted that “I learned above all to read advanced literature on my own, in addition to sparking my interest in topics I was unfamiliar with, such as differential geometry and geometric analysis—areas that are closely related to finite element exterior calculus”.
“Alongside Alonso at GMU,” he explained, “I learned to be creative in my research; Harbir gave us guidance but also freedom and trust, which was fundamental to the initiative I had to take before and during the development of my thesis.”
Benjamín Venegas Solís
“It is very gratifying, both for my counterparts at SFU and GMU and for me, to see the various outcomes that have emerged—both directly and indirectly—from the exchange programs we have carried out since 2014 and 2024 in Vancouver and Fairfax, respectively,” explained Prof. Gatica.
“In other words, the respective resources contributed by these North American universities and UdeC for these stays are already yielding significant academic results,” explained the researcher, who is also a member of the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering (CI²MA) at the UdeC.
“In particular, four former UdeC students have already earned their doctorates from SFU, one of whom, Javier Almonacid, will actually be doing a postdoc at GMU starting next July, thus highlighting a subsequent connection between SFU and GMU, which further reaffirms the importance of these mobility programs”, emphasized the UdeC full professor, noting that “there are currently two of our former students pursuing their doctorates at SFU, whom Estefanía will join”, he added.
Continuing research at globally prestigious institutions
Regarding the motivations that led her to make this decision, Estefanía—the first woman to graduate from this program at UdeC who will pursue a PhD abroad—explains that “ever since I was in the program, I realized that I really enjoyed the process of researching, learning new things, and delving deeper into mathematics beyond what one typically encounters in undergraduate studies. Over time, I began to feel a strong desire to follow that path and dedicate myself to research”.
The SFU program, she explains, caught her attention because of “the work being done in the areas of my interest and the university’s academic quality. Additionally, the program’s international atmosphere and the opportunity to work with researchers from around the world really excited me, as I feel it’s a great chance to continue growing both academically and personally”.
For his part, Alonso explained that “I’ve always been interested in conducting research in mathematics, and fortunately, I had the opportunity to do so during my undergraduate studies. This experience reinforced my desire to continue with graduate studies and pursue an academic career, motivated primarily by an interest in understanding deep topics, developing new tools, and being able to communicate them to others”.
Alonso Bustos Barría.
Regarding his decision to pursue a Ph.D. at GMU, he explained that “it was particularly influenced by Professor Harbir Antil, whom I met during a research stay last year and who has guided me through the application process. I find his work in the numerical analysis of partial differential equations very interesting, and it motivates me to continue learning in that area, as well as to connect it with other areas of mathematics, such as optimization, calculus of variations, and stochastic processes”.
Benjamín, meanwhile, stated that “from early on in my degree program, I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to research, so my reasons are mainly realizing how fulfilling academia itself was for me, and even though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to study, I knew I wanted to do research”.
Regarding the choice of the Oxford program, he notes that it was a more complex decision, given the specificity of his area of interest: finite element exterior calculus, a situation further complicated by the large number of applications that programs currently receive.
“I had known my future supervisor, Dr. Kaibo Hu, for some time because he is one of the leading researchers in the field, so his name always appears in new articles and conferences”, and because “my undergraduate thesis advisor, Dr. Snorre Christiansen hosted him in Oslo in 2017 for a postdoctoral position, and they have collaborated continuously ever since”.
That connection allowed him to get to know Prof. Hu virtually, who, on one occasion, “expressed his interest in having me attend the University of Oxford under his supervision, which, of course, I already shared”.
“In addition to the fact that Kaibo’s work is very interesting and will allow me to significantly deepen my knowledge,” he emphasized, “the university itself is of great interest to me, and I believe it would be any student’s dream to have the opportunity to study there, which is why I feel very fortunate”.
Written by Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM Communications.
Posted on Mar 19, 2026 in News
