July 8th, 2020
Hope that everyone is doing well, and that you are taking all the prevention, protection, and social distancing measures to protect yourself and your family from COVID-19.
As Puerto Rico is moving forward to re-open its economy and activities, I am deeply grateful and glad to say that all our employees and their immediate family are safe, and healthy. Most of our employees continue working remotely, but we are enabling our facilities to be ready to receive those employees which operational needs required physical presence in our sites. I am immensely proud of the work that all the Trust employees are doing during this pandemic, each program has reinvented their program deliverables to fit the new work environment dominated by virtual technologies.
As we continue to evolve and grow our programs, I am pleased to announce new positions in our executive team. Sebastián Vidal is expanding his role at the Trust and will serve as part of the executive team in capacity of Chief Innovation Officer, (CINO) in addition to overseeing the Parallel18 program. César Piovanetti will also become part of the executive team as Chief Information Officer (CIO) .
As the Chief Innovation Officer (CINO), Sebastián main objective is to increase and scale the Trust mission through the creation of new platforms around the main challenges of the island that can be addressed by specific innovation strategies. In addition to that, the Puerto Rico Science Technology and Research Trust is increasingly addressing some of the most pressing verticals of the island, working with projects in health, agriculture, resilience, research, entrepreneurship, education, among many others, creating deep insights and data to build innovation capacity that could potentially be addressed to create more impactful entrepreneurs in the long term. Sebastian will prospect, design and build the right infrastructure, content, and procedures around the current programs opportunities that the Science Trust could have, attracting the right expert resources, funding opportunities and a network to support their growth and success. As the CINO he will be constantly identifying areas of opportunity to build new innovation capacities in Puerto Rico, taking a highly active role in driving some of the new Trust initiatives.
As Chief Information Officer of the Trust ( CIO), Cesar will ensure that our organization effectively use the appropriate information and communication technologies as well as the data to deliver their programs. He will be responsible for all IT resources and activities such as policy and practice development, planning, budgeting, staffing, and training. Cesar is also serving as the Trust HIPAA Security Officer. During the current pandemic situation Cesar leadership has being critical to enable multiples programs, including the Covid-19 contact tracing for Puerto Rico municipalities.
Please join me in congratulate Sebastián and César in their new positions!
Lucy Crespo
CEO P.R. Science, Technology & Research Trust
Sebastián Vidal – Chief Innovation Officer & Parallel 18 Executive Director
Sebastián Vidal is an investor and advisor of technology companies in Latin America. He has been deeply involved in the LatAm startup scene for close to a decade and have had a front-row seat on the rapid evolution of the ecosystem. He was involved very early in the formation of Start-Up Chile, Latin America’s leading accelerator. Through Start-Up Chile, he was able to work side by side with more than 1,000 startups in different stages and industries, managed a $10m USD budget annually, and witnessed a country’s cultural transformation towards entrepreneurship. As executive director in 2014-2015, he led the program to become the most innovative company in Latin America (FastCompany, 2015).
Following his time at Start-Up Chile, He led the development of Parallel18, an international startup program based in Puerto Rico, managed by the Puerto Rico Science Technology and Research Trust, that supports and invests in 80 global companies per year with the goal of having an economic and social impact on the island. After the first year, the program has been able to generate a 5x return on the public distributed investment. He has also helped develop technology ecosystem public policy strategies in countries like Peru, Brazil, Malaysia and South Korea, and consulted the World Bank for a technology development ecosystem project in Lebanon. He has invested in some startups and has also been a mentor in different accelerators and entrepreneurship programs such as Stanford Ignite, Founder Institute, MIT Technology Review and others.
César Piovanetti – Chief Information Officer & HIPAA Security Officer
Mr. Piovanetti has over 10 years’ experience in the geographic information systems (GIS) field, as GIS Analyst in various locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Experience with ArcGIS Desktop, Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, Collector for ArcGIS and Survey123. Experience in LiDAR projects that range from feature extraction, LAS Dataset classifications and Terrain Generation for hydrologic modeling and simulation gaming environments. He also provides knowledge in ArcGIS Enterprise and its use with multiple Web Mapping and mobile platforms.