Federico Valdés Lafontaine is Rector of the Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) since 2011, where he previously had served as Vice Rector in Economic and Provost.
Federico is one of the founders of the UDD, which was born in Concepción in 1990 with only 100 students and which 9 years later had already began academic activities in Santiago and counted a total of 1,500 students. Today, the institution has almost 15,000 students and 16,000 alumni from its 24 undergraduate courses that include, among others, Medicine, Engineering and Law.
Currently, the university has two headquarters in two cities, four campuses and two clinics. Regarding postgraduate studies, the university has more than 2,500 students, concentrating especially in its schools of Government, Education, Business and Health Sciences.
Under his presidency, the UDD has achieved the third institutional accreditation in 5 years, including for the first time the Research area, and, thanks to its achievements in entrepreneurship, innovation and public responsibility, has been named as one of the 40 best universities in Latin America according to the Times Higher Education Ranking.
Federico Valdés is a civil industrial engineer from the University of Chile and he holds a Master of Science in Management from Stanford University.