Historical Review

In 1999, Miguel Ferrada Gutiérrez graduated in Chemical Sciences in the University of Chile. Two years later, he began to work in ULMEN S.A., his family's company, which sells admixtures for concrete. His first task there was studying all the concrete system in order to understand it and to find the answer to a question that could not be answered up to that moment. Two weeks after beginning this study, he could explain why an admixture for concrete worked in winter and not in summer and made the necesary changes to solve this problem . This discovery increased the sales of ULMEN, because the additive could now be sold throughout the entire year. The following two years he worked as Outsourcing for ULMEN, reformulating the rest of the additives of the company, and hence being able to improve them and to reduce up to 35% the manufacture costs.

The mine "El Teniente", the biggest underground copper deposit of the world, asked him in 2003 for a product that replaced the microsilica they used in their concrete. Miguel already had experience in nanotechnology and he knew that the best option to replace the microparticles was nanoparticles. Hence, using his knowledge in physics and chemistry he created (Gaia), a liquid nanosilica for concrete that gives better results than the microsilica, solves the contamination problems and in addition, (it) allows to save cement. But this product was so innovating that the concrete manufacturers from "El Teniente" tried its effects in the concrete during a year before they made their purchase effective. Nowadays, "El Teniente" has prohibited the use of microsilica and they only use Gaia.

In October of the same year, the XIV Congress of Concrete took place in Chile, and this was the opportunity to present "Silica Iso 14001", where Gaia was officially shown to the World . From this moment on, everything became public, not only in congresses but also in magazines and Internet sites. Thanks to the media, the Venezuelan contractor of oil services "Servicios y Suministros de Oriente", asked for a nonotechnology product for oil well cementation, and according to this request, Pangea, a new nanosilica, was born in April 2005.

In January 2006, Miguel Ferrada was awarded by InnoCentive®, a company from Massachusetts which invites scientists to solve challenges of investigation and development posed by companies from the entire world. In This way, he became the first Latin American scientist who obtained this recognition for finding out new applications for polymeric nanoparticles.

This prize allowed him to understand that the discoveries he had made were not mere chance. Even more, that his own way of making science and metacognizing could be / were much more effective than the traditional methods. He decided then to create a company of his own in which he could could apply this methodology to different areas of science and create innovating technological products which could help protecting humanity and the environment And this is how Cognoscible Technologies S.A (CT) was born.