Alejandro Alvarado, a member of the Optolab team and a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at EIE PUCV, is currently conducting a research internship at INRS in Montreal, Canada, thanks to the ELAP scholarship.
Alejandro Alvarado, a member of Optolab since 2021, who is now in the final stages of the PhD program in Electrical Engineering at the School of Electrical Engineering (EIE) PUCV, will undertake a 6-month research internship at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The PhD candidate received the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program (ELAP) scholarship from the Government of Canada, which will allow him to spend a semester working at the Applied Computational Optics Laboratory at INRS.
This scholarship enables higher education students from Latin America and the Caribbean to spend a period ranging from 4 to 6 months at a Canadian university, providing substantial financial support. In Alejandro’s case, the scholarship amounts to CAD 11,100, which will cover travel expenses, accommodation, visa processing, health insurance, and daily expenses during his stay in Canada.
Alejandro will share this experience with Eduardo Sepúlveda, a master’s student from Universidad de la Frontera, who is also part of our SEETRUE Project through his work at the Information Processing Laboratory.
Together, they will be working with the distinguished Professor Jinyang Liang from the University of Quebec, head of the laboratory, who conducts research in areas such as photoacoustic microscopy and ultrafast imaging, and is a leading expert in ultrafast imaging acquisition.
The opportunity to spend a semester at INRS will allow Alejandro to advance the development of his PhD thesis, which focuses on the design of aperture codes for compressive systems.
In other words, he is exploring strategies for cameras to capture large amounts of information without the need to sample every detail when taking a photograph or video, thus allowing efficient image acquisition. This could apply to high-speed or ultrafast cameras, spectral cameras, and other potential applications.
We spoke with Alejandro to learn more about this experience:
How do you feel about receiving this scholarship, and why did you choose this INRS lab for your internship?
It was intense work that finally paid off. It’s an incredible opportunity to work in a lab that is at such a high level, with equipment that would be very difficult to have in Chile. As for why I chose this lab, I had been following Professor Liang’s research for a while, and when Professor Esteban proposed this opportunity to me, I couldn’t say no.
What are your expectations for this experience?
I hope to successfully complete the project they’ve proposed here, finish the publication, improve my English skills, and build academic connections that could benefit both me and the lab. I hope to continue the cooperation and make the most of this scholarship opportunity.
How has Canada been so far?
Well, we arrived in winter, so we’ve had snow and have been living with it daily. Everything here is very calm and organized, and it’s interesting to see everything covered in white. Also, the days are very short, so we have to make the most of the daylight. There’s a lot I would like to explore and visit, but I’ll have to wait for better weather. And of course, as a Formula 1 fan, I’m looking forward to the race.
We congratulate Alejandro, who is a key figure in research in the field of computational imaging at our Optoelectronics Laboratory, for this great achievement. We wish him a fantastic experience full of new challenges and great moments.