Noticias
The Tech Transfer and Innovation Unit of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD) has been working on the Vincula Platform since 2020. This project is led by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the University of Concepción. Our researchers Andrea Rodríguez and Marcelo Arenas are part of the scientific board of the initiative.
Vincula aims to promote and facilitate the connection between the knowledge produced by academics in Chile and the parliament. The platform’s goal is to become the point of connection between parliamentarians who legislate on certain topics and the scientists expert in those fields.
Once the connection has been made, the parliament representative can contact the experts and ask them to contribute with their expertise to technical issues related to different legislations.
The platform draws upon data made available for this purpose by several universities in Chile. The data refer to the scientific productivity of their researchers. The information is processed using advanced natural language processing techniques, allowing the platform users to look for experts using law topics as search terms.
In 2023, we started the open beta phase of the development, and Vincula received the first users. The goals for 2024 are to increase the number of universities that are part of the system (a decision that requires giving access to their productivity data) and to test the platform with more users. We will also focus on adding new features: we expect to develop a recommendation system and a notification system that sends alerts to the scientists when a topic of their interest begins to be discussed in parliament.
We are confident that this platform will help to reduce the gap between the academia in Chile and the Legislative Branch. For more information, read this article that describes the beggining of the project: bit.ly/3RB6fuW
