Paula Andrea Villa Sánchez is a System Engineer from the Technological University of Pereira. She was recognized in another department, she has several projects behind her that speak of who she is and are known for the achievements they show without needing much introduction, and even more interesting things are coming in the future.
Tell us a little more about the work you were recognized for at the Magdalena.
It was delivered on World Tourism Day, by the ‘AvenHub Magdalena, Connect with Macondo’ project, in which we developed a set of virtual reality experiences so that people can teleport to the 14 municipalities of that department, to 42 tourist attractions. In parallel, we also contributed a component to ‘La Ruta Macondo’, which is a project that the Government does lead and there what we do is the design of technological innovations for 10 tourist attractions, we also gave training for businessmen in the sector on topics such as cooperativism, customer service and regulations.
How do you get to the point of not having to go to Magdalena to do the Macondo route?
During 2017 – 2018, I made a couple of trips outside the country in which I visited many tourist attractions and, for example, in the Louvre Museum, the guides to visit it were audio-only devices and I began to see how the technological issue was moving. in this aspect. I was also at the Smart City, which is the meeting of Intelligent Cities in Barcelona, there I saw that on the topic of tourism there was still a need for a lot of technology in terms of promotion, so with a fellow student named Juan Diego Gómez, who also developed virtual reality themes with the treadmill, but in other sectors, we proposed a project and they opened a call in MinCiencias, in the General Royalties System, so based on what we had, we presented ourselves and began to be able to determine what the innovation was. that we were going to carry out, from there came the topic of the study in Neurosciences, a measurement of brain signals to know how people interact with the environment. We did very well in the MinCiencias grading, as well as in that of our external peers, and they finally approved us.
How easy is it to bring all this to everyday life?
Indeed, at first it was like an idea and we showed what we were going to do, but within the first year of executing the project we already had the virtual reality treadmill and a first prototype so that people could see it. So we did a forum in Santa Marta, where people connected there on a treadmill and other people here in Pereira entered a simulated environment in parallel. When we advanced much further in development, we were able to appear with the Magdalena Government at two fairs in Anato, we took the treadmill, people got on to see these tourist attractions. We were also in Fitur Spain, there we only took the glasses and the people were delighted with the tours. More than 3,000 people have participated in the different events. Now, the final phase of the project is to deliver three smart kiosks; one will be located in Tayrona park, another possibly in El Rodadero and one more at the Simón Bolívar airport.
WomTic (Woman ICT) is linked to this project or is it different.
It is separate, but we are uniting them. Wontic is a comprehensive system for training women who have been victims of violence or are in vulnerable conditions. There we also use neuroscience in women, they are given an initial diagnosis guided by a psychologist to determine how much they were affected by violence. of gender, sometimes we do not realize that we are in a process of violence, so what WomTic does is be able to identify that condition and show them how they have lost that brain connection due to this cause, then we do a training process to reconnect and overcome adverse situations. In addition, we teach them topics of entrepreneurship, technology, how to use a computer, how to use social networks for their projects. This led us to do a pilot test. We have stories from women who tell us how WomTic changed their lives and it has been very rewarding. This also means that to the women who are in the Peace Tourism program in Magdalena, we give free of charge one thousand accesses to female victims to that platform so that they can begin their training and transformation process.
Do the women of Pereira have access to all this wonder?
The pilot test was done here and now I am part of the Pereira is a Woman strategy of the Mayor’s Office, we are reviewing how we can articulate with WonTic, to be able to encourage women to also study technology topics.
Was there always the concern of making technology available to people?
Yes, indeed since I started working at the UTP in 2008, as a research teacher and there in the interaction with the students, there were always entrepreneurship initiatives, I helped them and directed many degree projects, in addition we worked with science and technology projects. and innovation. There has always been the motivation of the gift of service, of how technology transforms lives and that public resources are well invested.
2024-10-28 05:56:00