In 2000, in the wake of a period of political instability in Chile, a group of biologists and physicists came together to found an unusual institute. The Center for Scientific Studies (CECS) is based in the town of Valdivia, 800 km south of Santiago. One of the founders' initial hopes, says centre director Claudio Bunster, was that they might help redirect the efforts of Chilean military men and effect societal change by “forging links between civilians and the military through science”. Now, for example, military officers fly converted anti-submarine aircraft for the centre's scientific missions to the Antarctic.

Bunster has an idealistic outlook, in part because his institute is small and relatively bureaucracy-free. When CECS biologists needed more time and money to finish a new genetics building, the institute's climatologists and glaciologists simply delayed their trip to the Antarctic for a year. This sort of compromise could be rather tricky in a typical university setting.

Major areas of focus at the CECS include biophysics, theoretical physics, and glaciology and climate change. Despite their disparate subject areas, CECS scientists often find ways to collaborate. One Antarctic mission run by glaciologists inspired biologists to search for extremophiles in a 4,000-metre-high salt lake in northern Chile.

The centre also boasts a milestone for South American biology: the continent's first certified transgenic mouse facility. Typically, such mice are imported, but CECS scientists have now bred their first transgenic mouse. Without proper sanitary and certified facilities, Chilean scientists can't design model animals or take a greater role in the community of mouse researchers, notes CECS biologist Marcelo Rubinstein. “We were completely lacking the technological capabilities,” he says. The facility will house mice designed to model conditions ranging from obesity to neurological disorders.

The Chilean government provided one-third of the core funding for the CECS; the rest came from the World Bank's Millennium Science Initiative, the Fundación Andes and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The centre's yearly budget is just US$8 million.

In 1999, the CECS had 20 scientists, including graduate students; it now has 80, one-third of whom are foreigners. Bunster intends the centre to grow only another 20% at most. To retain the centre's soul, he plans to keep it small, agile and, as much as possible, bureaucracy-free.