02/19/2015 13h59

First Brazil-Ireland Science Week to welcome biggest ever group of Brazilian researchers to Ireland

DCU – Dublin City University

Up to eighty senior researchers from Brazil will come to Ireland later this month to attend the first ever Brazil-Ireland Science Week. Presidents of Brazilian funding agencies will also attend the conference entitled ‘Collaborative Research for a Better Future’.

The Brazilian delegates will meet with their Irish counterparts during the three day conference which will take place in Dublin Castle from February 23rd to 26th. Representatives from Irish research institutes, government bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Embassy in Brazil will participate in group discussions, along with industry representatives and European Union personnel.

Research Brazil Ireland (RBI), funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), is a strategic cooperation initiative that brings together a consortium of eleven Irish third-level institutions and research centres to drive a coordinated national approach to promote Ireland’s scientific and technological reputation in Brazil and to highlight Ireland’s attractiveness as an international research partner.

Ireland is recognised as a world-class location for research, development and innovation with a proven track record of aligning activity to the current and emerging needs of industry.

Brazil is an emerging economy with the ambition, capacity and resources to become a world leader in high-level scientific research. Both countries have a well-established and respected profile amongst the global science community and are increasingly focused on looking outwards and internationalising their research activities.

The RBI programme was created to develop research and educational links between Ireland and Brazil across five thematic areas: Information and Communication Technologies; Environmental Science and Technologies; Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology; Biopharmaceuticals, Biotechnology and Health; and Sustainable Energy and Agroproduction.

During Brazil-Ireland Science Week, SFI will sign Memorandums of Understanding with FAPERJ, the Rio de Janeiro State funding agency for scientific research; with Confap, the national council for state funding agencies in Brazil. These agreements will enable future collaborations between Irish researchers and their Brazilian counterparts. This adds to existing understandings already in place between SFI and FAPESP, the Sao Paulo Science funding agency, and CAPES, and CNPq, two federal funding agencies from Brazil.

In the last two years alone, the Brazilian government has funded more than two thousand science students to study for one year in Irish universities and Institutes of Technology, under a programme called Science without Borders. Next September, a further 1,123 students will arrive to Irish higher education institutes.

The Brazilian government, through its funding agencies, has commended Ireland for the reception offered to these students, and had to adjust the amount of places available to Ireland in the most recent scholarship process, due to unprecedented demand from the Brazilian students.

Brazil-Ireland Science Week is an important opportunity to deepen existing relationships and identify new partnership possibilities that are relevant in a constantly evolving global landscape, by bringing together researchers, higher education institutions, funding agencies, industry representatives and policy decision makers.

Through the provision of mobility funding, Research Brazil Ireland has aided the creation and support of at least 13 active working groups in the thematic areas, with each working group incorporating researchers from at least two Irish Higher Education Institutions, and at least two of their Brazilian counterparts. In addition, several collaborations between individual reasearchers have been assisted.

Among the active RBI collaborations, one working group is developing a project in Bio-Analytical Sciences, which counts on the participation of researchers from Brazil-based INCTBio, UFABC, Unicamp, USP, UFMG, UFRGS, as well as Irish partners Dublin City University (DCU) and the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI).

A working group in the area of Information & Communication Technology has Brazilian collaborators from Inatel, URFJ, USP, Unicamp, PUC Rio, UFRGS, UnB with Waterford Institute of Technology while, another group are investigating Future Wireless Technologies, with collaborations from Trinity College Dublin, Maynooth University, Waterford Institute of Technology, and Brazilian partners UFPR, CPqD, UnB, and UFRJ.

Research Brazil Ireland is coordinated by Dublin City University and has a local office in Rio de Janeiro.