In December 2022, Lori Hoagland, Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and co-director of the Arequipa Nexus Institute, and Cristian Salinas, PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Ecological Sciences and Engineering Program, visited the Department of Caldas and capital of Colombia to re-establish research collaborations started by Dr. Hoagland when she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, but interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also sought to lay the groundwork for developing a study abroad course for Purdue students in Colombia, and support other academic and research  cooperation between Purdue and institutions in the South American country. They were accompanied by Dr. Sherlyn Tipayno, a Fulbright Scholar from the Philippines who was conducting a sabbatical in Dr. Hoagland’s Lab, and Esteban Villamizar, an undergraduate student at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and fellow of the UREP-C program in Spring 2023 who worked in the Hoagland Lab.

Their first visit was to the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café – CENICAFE, which is part of the prestigious National Association of Coffee Growers. The group learned about Colombia’s unique coffee production systems, and exchanged common interests in leveraging new insights in microbiology to enhance the sustainability of coffee production. They also took steps to formalize a memorandum of understanding that will support collaborative research between a diverse group of scientists at CENICAFE and Purdue University. At CENICAFE, they were received by Dr. Lucio Navarro, Dr. Hernán González and Dr. Juan Benavides, who previously completed their doctoral studies or conducted short-term research stays at Purdue.