Industrial Civil Engineering students from the Universidad Católica del Norte (UCN) are developing an application that optimizes the economic management of aquaculture projects, with emphasis on mussel and microalgae farming.
After completing their professional internship at AquaPacífico during January and February 2025, the students identified common issues related to the fluctuations of the Pacific oyster market of theGiant scallop ex Pacific oyster), which motivated the development of a digital tool that will allow calculating production costs, projecting scenarios and defining updated values for the sale of oyster seed and microalgae.
In this sense, Claudia Soto, Executive Director of AquaPacífico, comments that "one of the students' objectives was to determine the production cost of oyster seed, which is the main bottleneck for the development of the cultivation. This is what motivates the development of the tool by the students."
The project consists of the development of an intuitive and accessible digital application built with Power Platform tools (mainly Power Apps and Power Automate), designed specifically to support productive and economic management in the cultivation of Pacific oysters.
Our goal is to develop a technological solution focused on the aquaculture sector and scalable to other areas, which optimizes the economic management of production projects, addressing the issue that current market prices do not reflect the fluctuations in production costs. Therefore, there is a need to calculate real costs and project production scenarios that allow setting prices that guarantee the profitability of the projects”, explains Javiera Rojas, student of Eng. Civil Industrial UCN.
There are many advantages that the implementation of this type of tools offers, as explained by Gerberth Rieu, the student also involved in the proposal, among them: the clear and precise breakdown of costs that allows to visualize the financial requirements of the production process; suggestions of sale prices of the mollusk, adjustable according to the percentage of utility desired by the producer; reduction of times They are normally intended to perform manual calculations; reduce the possibility of human errors in conventional spreadsheets, among others.
Proposal evaluated and approved by USQAI-UCN
The project has the advice of USQAI UCN, a laboratory of entrepreneurship and innovation that is part of the Directorate of Innovation and Technology Transfer (DITT) of the Vice-Rector of Research and Technological Development of the Catholic University of the North, which guides students in the development of entrepreneurial skills and the creation of prototypes.
“Through our training programs, personalized advice and volunteering, students are able to develop skills and competencies for entrepreneurship, as well as for their professional training, the most important of which is: entrepreneurial attitude, declared and validated competence,” says Consuelo Cortez, entrepreneurship manager USQAI-UCN, Coquimbo.
The proposal has already been approved by this incubator. “We are working on this project with the advice of USQAI, who guide us in the work plan, including key activities such as the development of a business model and the creation of a functional prototype in Power Apps,” explains Gerberth Rieu, an Ing student. Civil Industrial UCN.
In this sense, the support of USQAi is fundamental for the training of students and comes to complement the work done in the area of Business and Technology Transfer in terms of business plans and models for its different services and scientific - technological packages of AquaPacific, where this work is framed.
In addition, USQAI supports the entrepreneurial teams in the search for funding, providing workshops and advice to apply for funds such as Seed Initiate, Sustainable Seed and Seed Women of Corfo.
Subject: Complex Engineering Problems
The subject aims to prepare a student to take one of two forms of capstone (or final project to solve a real problem or need of a company or institution): Research and Innovation. Understanding that the process of innovation and research requires a time of maturity.
Paul Lager, Director of the School of Engineering explains that “it is a free course (without scheduled classes) where students should work as an assistant to a research together with a research professor at the research capstone and develop an innovation product in the innovation capstone.”
“In short, this project considers the development of an application and its piloting. Focused on companies and organizations in the aquaculture sector, specifically oysters, but which can be extrapolated to other crops,” they say from AquaPacific.
