28/04/2026
CEDENNA director Dora Altbir, took part in a new edition of Puerto de Ideas in the Antofagasta Region, where she gave the talk “When the smallest things change the world”. Before a broad audience, she explained how nanoscience is ceasing to be an abstract concept and becoming concrete solutions in health, energy, the environment and technology. During her presentation, the Chilean physicist, who is also director of Institutional Projects at Universidad Diego Portales, discussed what it means to work at the nanoscale. These are materials with dimensions smaller than 100 nanometers, that is, one billionth of a meter. Although nanoparticles exist in nature, today science makes it possible to design them and modify their properties, which opens the door to new applications. The talk also focused on the accelerated pace of scientific development and the need to bring it closer to the public. “Knowledge today is developing tremendously fast. There are many scientists and advances, and Puerto de Ideas is an opportunity to give people information about what is happening in the world,” she said. One of the examples she used was carbon. At the nanoscale, this element can take forms such as graphene, fullerenes or nanotubes, materials with physical and chemical properties that open the door to new industrial developments. Throughout the presentation, she showed how nanotechnology is already present in different fields. In medicine, for example, cancer treatments based on hyperthermia with nanoparticles are being developed. In energy, materials that improve the efficiency of solar panels are being researched. There are also advances in cleaning contaminated water and developing faster-charging batteries for electronic devices. The researcher devoted part of her talk to what is being done in Chile. She mentioned sensors applied to mining, smart food packaging and early detection systems for diseases such as Parkinson’s. Added to this are developments in cell cultures for eye treatments and construction materials with better thermal properties. These advances are coordinated from CEDENNA, where teams from different disciplines work on developing solutions with practical application. The idea, as she explained, is that scientific knowledge does not remain only in the laboratory, but has a direct translation into daily life. The talk left a clear idea: what happens at an invisible scale is beginning to define technologies that are already part of the present.
