Political scientist Camila Díaz Foxon is the new executive director of the IMFD.

Camila Díaz Foxon, a political scientist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, will focus on three priority areas after assuming the position of executive director of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data. The first will be to accompany and promote the lines of research that, after five years of intense work, will address the scientific challenges that have been set for a new period with new impetus.

The second is to strengthen the projects that have arisen from some lines of research, which have the potential to become poles of attraction for scientists and whose topics have a profound social impact. An example of these is the initiative to address the debate on work ethics and data studies with an interdisciplinary approach.

The third priority focus involves intense work to systematize and streamline the IMFD's administrative processes to adapt them to the requirements of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), under whose wing is the Millennium Science Initiative, of which the center is a member.

" Accompaniment is essential for research projects, which sometimes encounter obstacles inherent to the scientific process, such as uncertainty, or other more circumstantial ones, such as the lack of human capital. Part of my role is to accompany them to remove barriers in their way and facilitate the smooth and harmonious development of their work," says the political scientist, who has a specialization in Education, Memory and Human Rights at the University of Chile.

Social science expertise brought to data science

Camila Díaz Foxon's career covers various fields, which has allowed her to see in practice the points where the contribution of science could produce significant social changes: she has been a teacher of Citizenship Education for high school students in a context of high social vulnerability and, as a researcher, she has participated in various studies of national scope in the evaluation of educational, housing and environmental public policies.

This experience was key to her being invited to be the executive coordinator of Plataforma Telar, one of IMFD's flagship projects. Telar integrated researchers and students of political science, sociology, computer science and communications to study with thick-data methodology the social debate around the Constitutional Convention of 2021-2022.

The excellence of her work made her the perfect candidate to succeed Bárbara Peñafiel as IMFD's Director of Research and Academic Training from 2022. In this role, her first tasks were to implement a smooth and agile process of incorporation of IMFD scholarship students to the center, follow up on their needs and progress in their careers, in order to consolidate a community of young people who still feel the impact of post-pandemic isolation and intense re-entry to everyday life.

"It has not been easy for anyone to cope with the consequences of the pandemic. In general, students and collaborators are in lower spirits and have less energy to lead or participate in activities. All the research centers and also the universities must take charge of this and provide human support", emphasizes the executive director.

Regarding the seal she wants to stamp on her leadership, the political scientist says: "I hope we can preserve and enhance the human seal that characterizes the IMFD, a center where people are the most important thing. We are a family, and we want to extend these ties to our entire community. A science that has no sense of the human risks being disconnected from society, and our center works hard to be in tune with people. Our mission calls us to do this: to do research that benefits society as a whole.