Raul Betancur

As a professional engineer, graduated from the National University of Colombia that gives me a solid academic background, I focused my education to areas such as materials sciences, biomechanics, project management, Structural analysis and renewable energy, fields that are taking great importance in a world where the need for clean energy and sustainable economies is greater and more engineers committed to the environment, are needed. My work experience give me expertise in logistics and transport engineering, the dynamics of multimodal transport, technical expertise in selection of transport or lifting equipment as cranes, project budgets, project management, national and international standard for marine and land transport, I had the opportunity to coordinate groups of people from professionals to technicians and get involved in projects of all sizes in mining, power, oil & gas, offshore and wind turbines. I worked as project engineer and project manager in national companies as Mamut de Colombia but also in multinational companies as Mammoet from the Netherlands. During my time in these companies I was advisor for the ICONTEC (Colombian Institute of Technical Standards) in the construction of the national standard of heavy cargo, I launched an engineering department, I did structural calculations and drawings for assemblies, I learned and introduced the LIDAR technology (such as google street view) in our route surveys, I make inventories of bridges and other elements on many roads of Colombia, Bolivia and Chile. Due to my working trips, I lived in several cities of Colombia as Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Barrancabermeja and Medellin. I have crossed several rivers by boat stopping at riverside villages of the Meta River to the border of Venezuela and the Magdalena River from the middle to river mouth, looking for cargo routes. I also traveled by road across Bolivia and the north of Chile. As a freelancer, I gave assessment in operations planning and proper use of equipment and resources to construction contractors companies, successfully. My experience as a teacher of the national institution of technical training SENA, gave me the tools to pass on my knowledge of mechanical and electromechanical assemblies, maintenance, and production management in a simple and practical way to low-income youth who are working and studying for free, to get better opportunities. I consider myself a simple ans spiritual person, willful, resilient, peaceful but active, consequent and positive, and therefore, in all these experiences I met people and costumes and I always try to learn from them and their cultures, something that makes me grow as a human being. My personal interest in science, arts, and traditional indigenous knowledge, my concern for the environment and the life that depends on it, my work experience and travels shaped me as an open-minded but conscious person with the faculty to learn and understand the economic and social dynamics of modern societies. I am currently in the process of joining as a partner to a non-governmental organization in order to present to different stakeholders a project related to the mitigation of financial risk due to climate effects. This idea came after I gave advice in the mathematics, the stochastic and the MATLAB Programming for a thesis related to the use of a new kind of financial options called “weather derivatives” as an insurance to hedge of bad weather effects. To date, we have been knocking on doors of different institutions such as USAID and some departmental governments such as the Government of Antioquia who was interested in implementing the project. We are looking for organizations who wish to invest or work in this project which helps small and medium producers to have a financial resilience during bad weather. Therefore, I want to be part of this organization, I want to give all my enthusiasm, experience and knowledge to the work that contribute to a better world.