São Paulo – The Medical School of Ribeirão Preto (FMRP), of the University of São Paulo (USP), is part of a training network that comprises the King Saud University, in Saudi Arabia, Yale University, in the United States, and the University of Ghana. By means of the Virtual Institute Training in Research on Infectious Diseases, students and professors at the four institutions may undertake exchange and pass information on research.
According to Benedito Antonio Lopes da Fonseca, a professor at the FMRP’s Medical Department, who is the regional director of the Institute, for the time being, students are being exchanged only with the Yale University, but in the future, it should take place among the four universities. In 2010, four students from Ghana, four from Brazil and one from Saudi Arabia travelled to Yale.
The network started operating in 2008, at first in Ghana and Yale only. In the following year, the Brazilian institution became a member, and last year, the King Saud University. Under the student exchange, postgraduate students usually remain in the United States for eight months, where under the tutelage of a researcher, tthey work on research subjects of their own or the professor’s, always in the field of infectious disease.
According to Fonseca, there are high technology labs in Saudi Arabia that are turned to the field, but the people to run them are few. That is why the exchange should benefit the country, which usually seeks specialists in other countries to help provide training in infectious diseases or carry out research. According to him, the exchange is also benefiting the FMRP by raising students’ awareness to the importance of having an experience studying overseas.
The possibility of becoming part of the virtual network came up as a result of contacts made by Fonseca himself, who spent seven years pursuing a master’s degree and a doctorate in Yale after graduating from the Medical School at the USP in São Paulo. Approximately three years ago, when Fonseca paid a visit to the United States, 16 years after having returned to Brazil, Michael Cappello, a professor at Yale, invited the Brazilian institution to take part in the initiative. Fonseca then spoke with the management at FMRP and the school began exchanging experiences with the group.
In late April, the network promoted a Symposium on Student Exchange between the FMRP and Yale, in which the cooperation on infectious diseases between the two institutions was discussed. The subject matters included antiretroviral therapy, the dengue virus and other pathogens, the biology of Trypanosoma brucei (parasite that causes the sleeping sickness), the vaccine against the hookworm, among others.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
