Daniel E. Moraga Muñoz, Ph.D.

Research

The Medical School of Universidad Catolica del Norte (UCN), located in IV Region of Chile, has recently created the Chilean Center for Extreme Environmental Studies Proyect (CEAE). The CEAE represent an institutional effort to investigate the short and long term effects of the exposure of people working in the environments defined as extreme for health such as: hipobarics and hipoxics (high altitude), toxics, hiperbarics and extreme temperatures. The CEAE programs of investigations will certainly have impact over the health and life quality of people working on these environments and about environmental and laboring policies in our country. According to the regional needs, the CEAE programs have been defined in four research areas: High Altitude Medicine; Neurotoxicology; Hiperbaric Medicine, and High Temperature Studies. Three of these research areas are directly related to mining, the most important economical activity in the Chile. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of mine workers, have been chronically expose to extreme environment conditions such as toxic chemical, high altitude (hipobary and hipoxia), and extreme temperature. The CEAE program, as far as we know, is the first Chilean a center oriented to the systematic studies of the long term effects of the exposure of people working in the extreme environments. Because of the potential impact that all the lines of studies of the CEAE program could have over different issues of commercial, legal, medical and political interest in our country, the CEAE board is looking forward to getting in contact with international non-profit organization in order to finance the projects and publish the results without enterprise nor political restrictions.

Currently, I am working in the higher education field, focusing in faculty development and curriculum design.