Harvard receives FAPESP scientific director

Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, attended meetings with professors, directors and students at Harvard University Tuesday to explore potential opportunities for research cooperation between the two institutions.

The Scientific Director of FAPESP, Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, attended meetings with professors, directors and students at Harvard University Tuesday to explore potential opportunities for research cooperation between the two institutions.

In a meeting with 15 professors and directors of such fields as the environment, medicine, engineering, social sciences, the arts, architecture, and others, Brito Cruz talked about the various programs FAPESP has for funding visits by foreign scientists to Brazil for varying lengths of time, as well as trips by Brazilian researchers abroad.

He placed special emphasis on the São Paulo School of Advanced Sciences, which began in 2009 and just released its latest call for proposals, and the São Paulo Excellence Chair, still in its experimental stage. These are two of the most attractive programs FAPESP offers for bringing scientists to São Paulo as one of the priorities of its internationalization policy.

He also mentioned partnerships such as the one already in place with MIT, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, like Harvard, and many other universities in the United States and other countries in which relatively small amounts of funding are contributed by the two parties to allow researchers the opportunity to engage in greater exchanges to build more ambitious joint research projects.

Brito Cruz also spoke with Brazilian students currently attending Harvard in graduate programs for the same purpose. Students in the areas of public health, public policy, education, law and architecture also shared their ideas with FAPESP’s scientific director on how FAPESP could expand the dialog between the institution and the university.

These meetings were held as part of FAPESP Week 2012, which is taking place in four events in North America: Toronto, Canada, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and Morgantown, West Virginia.