Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECs; Center for Scientific Studies) is a private, non-profit corporation based in Valdivia, Chile, devoted to the development, promotion and diffusion of scientific research.

CECs research areas include biophysics, molecular physiology, theoretical physics, glaciology and climate change.

CECs was founded in Santiago but is since 2000 housed in the recently modernized, German-style Hotel Schuster located by Valdivia River.

Claudio Bunster, a physicist and winner of Chile's National Prize for Exact Sciences, is the director of CECs.

The authors of the discovery are Andrés Rivera, Jose Uribe, Rodrigo Zamora and Jonathan Oberreuter.