São Paulo – Brazil wants to attract foreign researchers to the country to help develop new technologies and bring innovation into national industries and institutions. This is one of the plans of the minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Aloizio Mercadante. It will be one the means to foster the development of local projects under the program Brasil sem Fronteiras (Brazil Without Borders), which will also award 75,000 scholarships to Brazilian students overseas.
“What we want is to invest in innovation. We want to send our students to the best universities in the world, and bring over researchers from the top universities in any country,” said the minister during a meeting with foreign correspondents this Friday (30), at the Energy and Nuclear Research Institute (Ipen), in São Paulo. He claimed that the aim is to cover areas in which demand is strong in Brazil: science, technology and the various fields of engineering.
According to Mercadante, at least one foreign researcher has already set the details of his coming to Brazil. The Swiss Kurt Wüthrich, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002, will remain in Brazil for 3 years to develop projects in his field of work. He received the prize from the Swiss academy alongside the researchers John Benn and Koichi Tanaka, for developing study methods for assessing the biological strucutres of macromolecules such as proteins.
The attractions for researchers are the pay and the conditions. Wüthrich should earn 14,000 reals per quarter and 87,000 to equip the research lab. He will also be allowed to bring a postdoctoral student to Brazil and send another from Brazil to abroad. Wüthrich will develop his research at the laboratories of Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), in Rio de Janeiro. “We will issue calls for entries on newspapers around the world to attract researchers,” the minister promised.
Mercadante also stated that another means of fostering innovative projects is through establishing a company similar to the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). This new institution, which has not been established yet, should fund projects that the industry needs. The studies will be developed in already existing laboratories. According to Mercadante, the goal is to have 30 Brazilian labs participate in the project. Three labs have already joined, according to the government: the National Institute of Technology (INT), in Rio de Janeiro, the Institute of Technology Research (IPT), in São Paulo, and Faculdade Senai Cimatec, in Bahia. “These projects will be implemented based on the needs of the industry,” said the minister. The government has already set aside 60 million reals for the initiative.
To the minister, developing technology and innovation at this time may help Brazil fight the world economy crisis. He acknowledged, however, that Brazil is “falling way behind” when it comes to innovation. “We lived with super inflation for 20 years, so there used to be an aversion to risk, but we have also had a passive culture with regard to innovation,” he said.
At the meeting, Mercadante also stated that the Chinese company Foxconn is going to start manufacturing the Ipad and the Ipod, products of the US-based Apple, by the end of the year in Brazil. “There is a 20,000 square metre warehouse being built in Jundiaí. By the of the year, Foxconn will start making the Ipad and the Ipod in the country,” he said, highlighting that US$ 12 billion worth of promised investment should take place over the next five years. He also spoke in favour of 7% of pre-salt layer oil revenues to be allocated to science and technology. “Future generations will not have oil money available, so we need to invest these funds in education, science and technology.”
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
