São Paulo – Two researchers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) will be entrepreneurial ambassadors in a mission to Morocco later this month. Rodrigo Dantas da Silva and José Arilton Pereira Filho work at the Laboratory for Technological Innovation in Healthcare (Lais/UFRN) and were invited by the University of Lorraine in Paris, which has had a partnership with UFRN for three years.
Silva has a master’s degree in Management and Innovation in Healthcare, while Pereira is completing his undergraduate degree in Electric Engineering. Their first contact with the French university was during a summer Managing Engineering program last June. The course employed the Problem-Based Learning.
In a project that has been jointly developed and, by using the tools from the French program, the Brazilians managed to finish their phase in half the time. “I believe it’s one point that caught their attention, this delivery we made last October, three months before the deadline,” Silva explained.
The good impression brought a new opportunity to the Brazilians, who will go on a new mission. This time, the partnership with the French university will take the researchers to Morocco. During the visit, they will participate in a tour through several Moroccan universities and pass through the coast city of Agadir.
In the Moroccan mission, the Brazilians will be part of an entrepreneurial ambassador team. The idea is that they talk about their experiences before, during and after the Managing Engineering program. The accounts will include the procedures to get in the program, what they learned in class and how they are using its techniques in their research projects. The travel will be paid entirely by the University of Lorraine.
Silva and Pereira are the only foreign researchers amid the other eight students of the French institution. The Brazilians look forward for the opportunity to know Morocco. “I’ve never been to an Arab country before. The only contact we’ve ever had with its culture were through the Moroccan group at the course in France. When we were there, I felt a great synergy between us,” Pereira said.
Partnership with Morocco
The researchers expect that the good relations with the Moroccans may bring forth new partnerships for the university of Rio Grande do Norte. “We plan on signing something with a university there. We’re searching for researchers from Morocco and bringing about [agreements with] some interested university. It’s our first contact with these institutions,” Silva pointed out.
UFRN already has international cooperation with institutions based in the United States, Portugal, Spain, and France as well as a humanitarian cooperation with Tanzania. “We’ll try to take this opportunity to widen the partnerships. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in healthcare. The partnership with Canada and France, for example, is in education. We developed the technology for a training platform for healthcare professionals,” Silva said, pointing out that the university works with humanitarian science, which covers healthcare, education, and technological innovation.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda