Sustainable development through international collaboration and effective tech transfer
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We came from South America to the UK. After working for many years in Latin America, in Europe and the USA, either integrating or developing technologies from the “north” to the “south”, one of the main challenges we experienced was the adoption capability of these technologies. In most of the cases, they were (still they are) not designed and developed to those regions or end users. This motives us, while pursuing our PhDs at the University of Cambridge, to create a bridge, a nexus to support local innovation capability building: a bilateral platform. This platform initially based on student-led, international academic collaboration, expanded to become Camnexus. To achieve its mission, since 2015, Camnexus works in collaboration with the International Outreach Programme of Cambridge Enterprise of the University of Cambridge and with several international innovation agencies supporting innovation and tech transfer capability building. By understanding the local context and needs, through this platform we could provide solutions, such as based on enabling technologies. But such technologies would only make sense if transformed and adapted with local expertise to tackle the real challenges. The global challenges.
With the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) aiming for 2030, Camnexus has prioritised on the promotion of enabling infrastructure and skills that can solve inequality in the digital divide and connectivity gap. This has given rise to Camnexus-IoT in 2018. Taking advantage of our position in one of the most successful technological clusters of the world, Cambridge, we are developing low power digital infrastructure based on an ‘end-to-end’ Internet of Things network, which allows larger access and affordable scalability of connected devices and real-time data using low energy consumption sensors. Our development process is made with continuous collaboration with our international partners and users. We work closely with local policy makers, researchers, productive sectors, and end users, in order to mutually increase our skill in new technologies, to understand local challenges, to develop implementation plan, and to look for internationalisation opportunities. |
