Astrid Uzcategui, teacher in the Universidad de Los Andes, is also the Head of UGI ULA. For her, “researching is a complex process that requires diverse professional assistance in order to cover different stages: On the one hand the search of funding, the creation of the programs, projects and activities of the investigation and the terms and modalities of the funding contracts; on the other hand the correlation participants-researchers, rights and responsibilities of each parties and the protection of intellectual rights and commercialization of the product”.
Mrs Uzcategui also highlights that the Universidad de Los Andes is an institution with an established prestige regarding intellectual rights, with a famous national and international postgraduate on Human Resources; therefore she considers it is incomprehensible that the university does not offer professional legal advice to its researchers so far.
According to Mrs Uzcategui, one of the purposes of the Universidad de Los Andes when creating UGI ULA is to increase the possibilities of obtaining success regarding researches in the scientific, technological and humanistic fields, within the researching centers of the university. Furthermore, for her, the university should provide the information and the support that researchers require concerning the alternatives of contracts with enterprises or directly with the Estate. The university also should offer support to the modalities of these agreements, subscription to cooperation agreements with other national universities or abroad, as well as the evaluation of the funding from external resources and the renovation of direct contacts with the enterprises that still offer resources for developing researches.
“We work with scientific and humanistic research in the university. There is a cultural national heritage that the Universidad de Los Andes has contributed to highlight and it will be a researchers´task to increase this heritage; therefore the duty of the office will be to support the university in order to ease this task, without invading any of the competences of the academic and administrative bodies of the university”.
