News - Arequipa Nexus Institute - Purdue University/UNSA

News

UNSA Ranked 1st public university to sustain progress and 2nd best public university in Perú

May 24, 2021

Purdue's strategic partner in Peru, Universidad Nacional de San Agustin (UNSA) has been ranked as the 1st public university with sustained progress between 2016 and 2021, and 2nd best university public in the country. UNSA published the results recognized by SUNEDU, the Peruvian Agency Overseeing universities in the country, based on the ranking of SCIMAGO Institutions Rankings. According to the university, the fundamental factor for this remarkable position has been the institutional emphasis on transforming their research system into a scientific research focus on solving urgent problems in the region. Dr. Rohel Sanchez, UNSA's Rector; Dr. Ana Maria Gutierrez, Vice-Rector for Education and Dr. Horacio Barreda, Vice-Rector for Research have been recognized in different instances for their leadership and unwavering dedication to transform UNSA since 2016 when they were elected into their positions.

According to the Diario el Pueblo, UNSA had 83 registered scientific publications in 2015 and reported 509 more through 2019. The local paper highlighted that UNSA in recent years focused its scientific research on studies on the environment, mining, health, education, and infrastructure. In an earlier publication UNSA reported that in January of 2021 has surpassed 1000 publications in scientific peer reviewed journals as reported by Elsevier. Dr. Barreda stated that according to his records UNSA has done in the recent 5 years what it was not done in the last 60 years from which information is available.

From the Arequipa Nexus Institute we are proud of the partnership with UNSA and the dedicated joint work of UNSA and Purdue members of our team. The more than 150 Purdue and UNSA researchers in 21 projects have been focused on solving key problems on food, Energy, Water, and the Environment in the region of Arequipa. In the short last three years for instance, the Nexus has been able to publish 33 scientific articles, 9 are currently in review, and 53 more in preparation. These are the result of hard work on planning, carrying out field work, analysis, and writing manuscripts overcoming numerous barriers such as language, long distance travels, and internet connectivity. The dramatic restrictions and challenges under the pandemic since March of 2020 impacted our international collaboration severely. However, our researchers have creatively turned the challenges into opportunities and continued to work on producing manuscript for high level international journals, deepening capacity building and technology transfer for our colleagues at UNSA. Online technical workshops, by-weekly webinars, and production of user centered tools are part of the ways in which UNSA and Purdue researchers continued our collaboration. The national and international recognition that UNSA receives signals that our work goes in the right direction.