The digital transition is happening in all countries and affects all domains of society. | By Helkin Guevara
The incorporation of INDICATIC AIP into Senacyt's ‘ecosystem’ of research and innovation centers paves the way for Panama to go from being a consumer to a generator of information and communication technologies.
The country's new Public Interest Association (AIP) aims to become a center for technological development, research, training opportunities and collaboration with high-level specialists, in order to position Panama as a generator of knowledge, products and processes based on ICT (Information and Communication Technologies).
We are talking about the National Institute for Advanced Scientific Research in Information and Communication Technologies (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas Avanzadas en Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación (INDICATIC AIP), which was presented by the National Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Eduardo Ortega-Barría, during the recent Summit Innovation Ecosystems Panama 2022, organized by the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (Senacyt).
Developing advanced technology, opening an agile space for the insertion or reinsertion of talent in ICT and supporting the country's productive transformation, participating in the creation of an environment that fosters the creation of more innovative and competitive knowledge-based companies, are other objectives set by the INDICATIC AIP, Dr. Ortega-Barría shared during the presentation.
“The purpose of the INDICATIC AIP is to help us move from being simple consumers of information and communication technology to being generators of knowledge, products and processes related to ICTs,” summarized the Secretary of Senacyt.
Digital systems
When Philippe Aniorte, PhD in computer science, the first director of INDICATIC AIP, is asked about the strategy he will employ at the institute or about the first projects to be launched, he begins by qualifying the notion related to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), to refer instead to digital systems, a concept that is more up-to-date and more in line with the advances in the sector. “ICT is an acronym that has been used for a long time, but it seems to me that today it is a bit closed, because we are talking about broader and more ambitious areas and trends; so I prefer to talk about digital systems related to what we now know as digital transition, something that happens in all countries and affects all domains of society,” explains Aniorte, also a research professor, trained at the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.
This extension of digital systems, continues Aniorte, was born in factories more than 10 years ago, a trend baptized as “Industry 4.0” and that remained in the industrial perimeter, but today we are going to find intelligent systems that touch all domains of society, and therefore it is necessary to study and develop projects in this way, both in the line of research and in the training of professionals.
In the case of the line of research that INDICATIC AIP will follow, it will be done in an interdisciplinary way around smart systems, covering two relevant challenges: design and development of cyber-physical systems based on connected environments (IoT) and data management (big data), which has to do with data science, data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. “These are, in general terms, the lines that the institute will follow and our field of application, with a wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines that can be added to the project later on,” says Aniorte.
On the academic training side, INDICATIC AIP will manage scholarships for master's and doctoral degrees, in close coordination with Senacyt and the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá (UTP), where the institute's headquarters are located. “INDICATIC will have a strong training component. This is the first step towards research, training, always looking for collaborations with the outside world. The idea is to share competencies and support us with allies to speed up and gain time”.
And Aniorte remarks: streamlining processes and gaining time. Because, while the institution continues to acquire the parts it needs to operate at higher capacity, the strategy is to work through partnerships with foreign entities linked to the development of digital systems and thus, incidentally, begin to internationalize the programs and projects of INDICATIC AIP.
The collaborations will be established with centers in countries in the region where Aniorte has developed several projects in his 35 years of professional career. “The idea is, later on, to extend the network of collaborations with the rest of the continent and with European countries. If we want to do relevant things, we have to ally ourselves through professional networks,” he reinforces.
'AIP 'Ecosystem
Following its presentation, INDICATIC AIP joined the rest of the Panamanian public interest associations and other entities (some in the formation and development stages) that together make up Senacyt's ecosystem of research and innovation centers.
There are, in total, 10 institutions: Coiba AIP Scientific Station, Infoplazas AIP, Institute for Scientific Research and High Technology Services of Panama (Indicasat AIP), the National Metrology Center of Panama (Cenamep AIP), International Center for Political and Social Studies (Cieps AIP), Centro de Investigación Educativa de Panamá (Ciedu), Georgia TECH, Centro de Investigación y Producción en Ambiente Controlado (Cipac AIP) and Centro Regional de Innovación en Vacunas y Biofármacos (Crivb AIP), in addition to INDICATIC AIP.
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