Protein Lab

The protein lab’s team is composed of 8 people with various profiles but with a common ADN whose nuclides are Design, Electronics and computer science. They are teachers and student trainees of the UTEM University and entrepreneurs. All are there to work on the investigation (10% of the lab activity), for projects ordered by companies (80%) and/or to give a hand to student and entrepreneurs’ projects (10%).

There are two directors, Héctor Torres and Macarena Valenzuela. The latter is the founder of the protein lab and design teacher of the university. The former has worked for companies before and took part in the implementation of innovation labs. Their function is to manage the lab, the team and the relationship with universities and companies.

One particularity of this lab is that some teachers of the university come very regularly as members of the team. Francis Soto and Víctor Meza are specialized in electronics, Sergio Abarca in computer science and Manuel Lara is more oriented in Design.

Students can also do their thesis like María José who do an internship. In 2018, they were 4 and some of them, such as Josué Alarcón, a former student in design, can be hired after their studies.

Besides, Entrepreneurs can enter the team. Diego Vilches, a textile designer, is a resident of the lab where he can develop its own project under its name but has a contract with the lab to make investigation, to share his knowledge with lab members and to perform projects under the name of the lab.

And finally, some consultants work for the lab like Hugo Durney, Víctor Escobar, Carlos Cáceres, Pamela Armstrong to do investigations.

The strategy of this team is to choose opportunities instead of tackling all of them. To be selected, they have to be in line with the lab’s ADN and the strength of the team.

As a university lab, the community is essentially made of teachers and students but also entrepreneurs. In 2017, 17 people used frequently the lab.

Teachers are coming to work on investigation to produce papers and patents. Students find here the machines and the help to fulfill their final projects and even their thesis. And Entrepreneurs have access to a place to work, machine to develop their prototype and can be easily in contact with motivated students to make their team grow.

Besides those profiles, this lab is open to everyone. The access criterion is to have a project which involves design, electronics or computer science.

To attract more people, there is no formal communication. It works by word of mouth. Sufficient to even attract students from other universities! As from now, a yearly presentation is done for design student (it is easier when one know the founder is a design teacher of the university) and workshops have been done specifically for UTEM’s teachers.

Once you enter the lab, you can be trained on the required machine depending on your project and the “Go” of the team will allow you to be autonomous.

The area of influence of the lab is beyond the Chilean frontier. They succeeded in creating the « Design Studio », an international program with an Australian university thanks to the connection made by Héctor Torres when he worked there. The target is to replicate those initiatives and diffuse the concept of Protein lab.

The lab modestly started with computers and an area who belonged to the UTEM university. They essentially responded to the needs of theoretical projects done by students and teachers. But the growing interest motivated Hector Torres to raise funds. He succeeded to get 50 000 000 Chilean pesos (64 K€) from the university in 2013, 5 years after the first computers had been plugged. One year later the lab started to diversify its revenues by offering investigation & project development services to companies. Today, 80% of the revenue come from the university but this university dependence is reducing as the lab’s strategy is to be more autonomous while keeping a free rent. The rest comes from projects done for companies. With an 80 000 000 pesos of revenues (100 K€), the lab is at break even. Its main costs are human resources, machines maintenance and the acquisition of new machines.

But, the global revenue of the protein lab is much more than the financial one as a part of it is the knowledge shared by entrepreneurs when they are incubated. Indeed, all university students and entrepreneurs agree to develop their product in collaboration with the protein lab team and thus share its knowledge and added value for the free access to protein lab’s working space and all the machines. In that way, the currency is the knowledge. In consequence, all the projects are documented for internal uses.

To justify the part of the revenue that comes from the university, he lab has to show investigation indicators such as the number of publications (4 so far, meat printing, 3D printing on textile material, logistic monitoring and wireless communication for weather station), business indicators (number of clients, number of projects done,…) and teaching indicators (number of courses, number of students reached,…).