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Research units

To achieve the increase and impact of conducting and disseminating its scientific research and technological development, ESPOL encourages its teachers,, researchers, staff, and students to collaborate with each other, and to join the national, regional, and international research networks. We have research centers focused on the study of specialized areas, as well as research groups and laboratories aimed at generating tangible and intangible products resulting from research, development and innovation projects and activities.

Cadena de abastecimiento y logística
Tecnologías digitales
Industria sostenible e innovadora
Desarrollo económico
Producción agropecuaria y acuícola, y su transformación
Ambiente, clima y reducción de riesgos de desastres
Salud, bienestar y desarrollo humano
Eficiencia energética, energías renovables y alternativas
Educación y Comunicación

Institutional Support Centers

Center for Statistical Studies and Research, CEIE

Among the main activities of the CEIE are scientific research, research planning, experimental design, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, survey design, development of sampling frames, modeling and statistical analysis of data, application studies, both industrial and demographic, market studies, actuarial studies, observational studies, consulting, training, training and coaching, public opinion.

Lines of investigation:

  • Multivariate statistics.
  • Computational statistics.
  • Tax statistics.
  • Biodemographic statistics.
  • Spatial statistics.
  • Biostatistics.
  • Epidemiology.
  • Bioinformatics.
  • Public opinion. 
  • Institutional statistics.
  • Industrial statistics.
  • Criminological statistics.
  • Process quality.
  • Actuarial science.
  • Survival analysis.
  • Systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
  • Advanced statistical techniques for data mining and business intelligence.
  • Statistical learning.
  • Multivariate methods for Big Data analysis.
  • In general, any area of knowledge that requires cross-sectional or longitudinal design of experiments and/or data analysis.

Director:  Purificación Galindo, Ph. D.
Email: mpgalind@espol.edu.ec / estadist@espol.edu.ec
Twitter:  @ceie_espol

 

 Institutional Research Centers

Biotechnology Center, CIBE

Generates, applies, transfers, and disseminates the biotechnological solutions required by the agricultural industry of the Ecuadorian coast to support its competitiveness on a global scale, with special emphasis on the banana and cocoa industry, offering high value-added services to agricultural producers, the agribusiness and the local food industry.

Lines of investigation:

  • Characterization and use of Ecuadorian biodiversity.
  • Improvement of the quality and yield of plant material.
  • Use of by-products, surpluses, and agro-industrial waste materials.
  • Evaluation of the impact of the knowledge and products obtained from the research carried out in the center.
Information Technology Center, CTI

Create, innovate and develop through technological research projects new learning environments and technological solutions that meet the needs of students, and teachers, as well as those of the productive sector, industry, and society in general.

Lines of investigation:

  • Learning Analytics and Technologies (ATA).
  • Human-Centered Computing (HCSC).
  • Industrial artificial intelligence (IAI).
  • Technologies for intelligent environments (TAI).
  • Smart Grid Technologies (TRI).
  • Director: Katherine Chiluiza, Ph. D.
  • Telephone: 042-269777 Ext.: 7006
National Center for Aquaculture and Marine Research, CENAIM

It promotes the productive development of aquaculture and the sustainable use of marine biodiversity, through research, training, and the dissemination of knowledge, to contribute to the scientific, technological, and economic progress of the country.

Lines of investigation:

  • Aquaculture – Diversification [Technologies of reproduction, larviculture, and fattening of marine fish, bivalve mollusks, echinoderms, macroalgae].
  • Animal health [Diagnostic tools, epidemiology, immunology, microbiology, disease control and prevention, pathogen genetics].
  • Marine biodiversity [Biological prospecting, metagenomics, phylogeography, taxonomy, biological activity of compounds & metabolites].
  • Environmental [Monitoring contaminants generated by production systems, repopulation of marine resources].
Center for Water and Sustainable Development, CADS

It attends through research and development in connection with water problems, considering the economic, environmental, ethical and social responsibility fields.

Lines of investigation:

  • Study of the impacts of human activities and climate change on freshwater, estuarine, and coastal ecosystems and the services they provide.
  • Modeling of future climate scenarios and their effects on the hydrology of urban and natural systems.
  • Development of innovative techniques for the evaluation and monitoring of aquatic ecosystems in support of decision-making for environmental management.
  • Development of sustainable technologies for the provision of safe water and sanitation.
  • Application of molecular techniques and environmental DNA for the monitoring of ecosystems and urban environments.
  • Phone: 042-269478
  • Twitter: @CADS_ESPOL
Center for Research and Projects Applied to Earth Sciences, CIPAT

It manages the formulation and execution of research projects, development and services applied to Earth Sciences, establishing links of institutional, local and international cooperation linked to research for the rational use of natural resources in a context of sustainability.

Lines of investigation:

  • Spatial and regional planning (including landscape and land management) / Geology, tectonics.
  • Geology/Hydrology.
  • Bibliometrics for the management and evaluation of scientific research.
  • Improvement of social resilience in response to multi-threats (epidemics, pandemics, natural disasters).
  • Reduction of water pollution by disposal of domestic and industrial wastewater from cities.
  • Decrease in water shortages in many areas of Ecuador.
  • Planning, integrated management and monitoring of water use both at the domestic and industrial levels.
  • Strengthening capacities for Resilience in communities.
Center for Research, Development and Innovation of Computer Systems, CIDIS

Researches and develops smart technologies through the use and application of computer vision techniques, robotics, machine learning and energy systems; that will allow solving problems and potentiate operations for the productive sectors of agriculture, aquaculture, industry, transport and energy.

Lines of investigation:

  • Computer vision.
  • Service and field robotics.
  • Machine learning.
  • Advanced control of energy systems. 
Nanotechnology Research and Development Center, CIDNA

Its scope is research, innovation and development in science and engineering at the nanoscale, directing its work towards the characterization of materials, their processing and synthesis, and the improvement of their properties, considering the possibilities of practical engineering applications, and under the premise improvement of the quality of life of the human being and the protection of the environment.

Lines of investigation:

  • Crystal engineering..
  • DFT simulation of electronic properties of materials, surfaces and interfaces
  • Functional building materials: nanoparticles and hydrophobicity.
  • Novel construction materials with ductility for structural applications..
  • Chitosan-based composite materials. 
  • Nanostructured materials based on recycled polymers. 
  • Nanostructured biopolymers.
Center for Renewable and Alternative Energies, CERA

It develops research, transfer and technological innovation in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainability.

Lines of investigation:

  • Renewable and alternative energies.
  • Energy efficiency.
  • Energy, society and environment.
  • Phone: 042-269350
  • Twitter: @CeraEspol
Pacific International Center for Disaster Risk Reduction, CIP-RRD

It contributes to building resilience, reducing the population's vulnerability, improving the understanding of risk to prevent the appearance of new disasters, reduce existing ones and their impacts on the population's quality of life and sustainable development.

Lines of investigation:

  • Impact of climate variability in the coastal zone of Ecuador
  • Impact of climate change on human health.
  • Generation of public policies through research in disaster risk reduction.
  • Building resilience against COVID-19.
  • Development of early warning systems against floods (for small and medium-scale communities, and decentralized autonomous governments).
  • Preparation tools for GADs in the face of seasonal variations and climate change.
  • Application of integrated coastal management to reduce the risk of tsunami disasters.

 

Centers Linked To Faculties

Center for Industrial Digital Transformation (CTD) FACULTY OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Its objective is to create digital technologies that arise from the intersection of data processing and computer engineering, oriented towards the improvement of products, processes and services of the industry at a local and global level.

The CTD seeks to deliver base technologies aimed at strengthening local industry through the exploitation of information and scientific knowledge. The type of problems to be solved will depend a lot on the demands of the client and the work team that is formed to execute each project. The CTD has an initial group of experts in various fields of electrical engineering and computer science who will be in charge of proposing and leading future initiatives based on their interactions with the external sector.

Lines of investigation:

  • Distributed and operating systems: Design systems that self-configure and self-adapt to the workloads that the system receives at all times; For this, we used statistical and machine learning techniques in the analysis of system usage data (logs of requirements, accesses and workloads) and we proposed intelligent algorithms for selfconfiguration of the systems that allowed the creation of scalable architectures, tolerant to failures, which can maximize their performance and adapt to changes in the behavior of system users.
  • Software Engineering: Analyze needs and technical or business processes to design quality computing solutions. The focus of the research is to generate competitive advantages based on good software design and implementation practices. Solutions can be intermediate or finished products for various computing systems: cloud, embedded, distributed, etc.
  • Intelligent control: Design automatic control algorithms from mathematical and/or databased models to regulate the behavior of industrial systems. The main interest is system modeling and information fusion from physical sensors typically found in industrial plants such as bioreactors, production lines, and robotic systems.
  • Data analysis:  Design techniques to extract relevant information in various domains that serve to describe, understand and predict patterns in data of a different nature. Of particular interest is the fusion of social, georeferenced, and biological data captured in the form of time series, images, or videos. Some examples of applications include: political trends, fruit fermentation, detection of illnesses.
Rural Research Center (CIR) FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND HUMANISTIC SCIENCES

The Rural Research Center (CIR) specializes in the economic and social study of the rural sector, with an emphasis on agriculture and the management of natural resources in Ecuador, from the perspective of rural development. The research work carried out at the CIR seeks to contribute to the generation of knowledge and provide inputs for decision-making on rural agricultural and social policy, through analysis of the behavior of agents in local and global rural economies, using tools of economics, sociology, and related sciences (for example Ecology, Agronomy, Nutrition, Agriculture, Biodiversity and Bioeconomy) applied.

Lines of investigation:

  • Sustainable and innovative industry; more specifically when seeking and providing solutions that guarantee food safety and innocuousness in agribusiness.
  • Economic development; including the study of the effect of COVID-19 on consumer behavior and preferences, evaluation of changes in credit conditions in the Ecuadorian financial market, and its effect on social welfare and economic development, with an emphasis on MYPIMES.
  • Environment, climate, and disaster risk reduction working on improving social resilience in response to multi-threats (epidemics, pandemics, natural disasters, etc.), and planning, integrated management, and monitoring of water use both at the domestic level and industrial.
  • In health, well-being, and human development, studies are carried out on food safety and innocuousness in Ecuadorian society, and proposals for improvement are made.
  • In education and communication, work is being done on education for the conservation of biodiversity and environmental awareness, development of urban agriculture, and promotion of food safety and innocuousness in Ecuadorian society.
Center for Economic Research (CIEC) FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND HUMANISTIC SCIENCES

The CIEC is ESPOL's economic, social, administrative, and financial research unit. It generates information, research, analysis, and knowledge both in economic matters and in business management, to satisfy the demand and interest of the productive sectors and society in general.

Lines of investigation:

  • Economics and public finances, evaluation of public policies and public administration.
  • Economics of natural resources, agricultural economics, and environmental economics.
  • Operations management, organizational behavior, and human resources.
  • A social and economic evaluation of projects, market research, and consumer behavior.
  • Microeconomics, applied microeconomics (development, labor, education, health, etc.).
  • Macroeconomics, economic growth.
  • International economy, foreign trade, and international finance.
  • Experimental and behavioral economics.
  • Financial economics, corporate finance, and microfinance.
Center for Sustainable Technological Development (CDTS) FACULTY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND PRODUCTION SCIENCES

It promotes the development of sustainable technologies combining technical, environmental, and socioeconomic perspectives that include their effective transfer and application to the community.

Lines of investigation:

  • Bioenergy and biofuel technology.
  • Sustainable drying technology.
  • Modeling of local energy resources.
  • Distributed hybrid power systems.
  • Conventional and alternative thermal systems.
  • Ecovillages.
  • Rural and urban agroproductive technological systems.
  • ESD Training of Trainers.