Promoting scientific-technological research in various areas of knowledge by financing individual research projects is the main objective of the Fondecyt Regular 2025 competition of the Research Projects sub-directorate of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), which announced the results on Monday.   

Among the 181 initiatives selected at the national level for all areas of knowledge, is the project 'Conservation laws, convection-diffusion-reaction systems, and related models of multiphase flows: theory, numerics, and applications' (1250676), led by Dr. Raimund Bürger, Professor of the Department of Mathematical Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Universidad de Concepción, UdeC.   

The researcher and deputy director of the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering, CI²MA, of the same university and member of the Center for Mathematical Modeling, CMM, of the U. de Chile explained that this four-year project “will investigate four different types of models defined by time-dependent partial differential equations”.   

“The planned research includes mathematical and numerical analysis, the development of reliable and efficient numerical methods, and their application to real problems,” Dr. Bürger said and detailed that one of the challenges to be addressed is ‘the dynamics of gas bubbles, hydrophilic and hydrophobic particles, and liquid in a flotation column, equipment commonly used in mineral processing’.  

Another of the scientific-technological challenges to be addressed comes from the field of wastewater treatment and, explains the expert, “focuses on the study of equipment systems, particularly sequential batch reactors (...) where the aim is to solve an optimization problem”.   

The initiative was highlighted by the director of CI²MA, Dr. Rodolfo Araya Durán, who commented that “within a highly competitive competition, it is more than significant that Prof. Bürger has been awarded a Regular Fondecyt project. Obviously, this is a recognition of his impeccable scientific trajectory, as well as the excellence of his proposal. At the Center, we wish him the best of success in the development of this project”.  

Moving the frontier of knowledge through training  

The other two challenges addressed by the project are related to modeling the impact of tsunamis on coastal forests and solid-liquid separation in multiple spatial dimensions. “This project allows me to continue doing research on the aforementioned topics with external collaborators and former students, since I will have resources to finance visits to UdeC, as well as for my own mobility”, Dr. Bürger emphasized.  

The academic also comments that part of the resources will be destined to the development of degree and thesis memories of the Doctorate in Applied Sciences with mention in Mathematical Engineering of the UdeC “and I will contribute positively to the fulfillment of the group productivity orientation of the program's faculty in the long term, since essentially 60% of the members of the faculty (thesis directors) must be researchers responsible for a research project with external financing”.