North America FAPESP Week 2012

FAPESP is a public taxpayer-funded foundation that has the mission of supporting research in all fields of knowledge within the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research may be delivered by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, companies, higher education and research organizations in other countries and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration.

As part of these efforts and also in the context of the celebrations of its Golden Jubilee this year, the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) holds seminars and exhibitions in Toronto, ON, Canada and Cambridge, MA, USA and events in Washington, DC and Morgantown, WV, in the USA this October.

The first symposium will take place at the University of Toronto on October 17, bringing together researchers from Canada and Brazil to debate topics such as “Physiology - Exercise for asthmatic and COPD patients: how much do they perform and which are the real benefits?”, and “Neurosciences - Antidepressant like effects of deep brain stimulation in rats and the hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis”.

On October 23, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, an event will mark the first anniversary of the inaugural FAPESP WEEK, held at the same venue in October 2011, and will see the announcement of further projects of cooperation between FAPESP and the Wilson Center.

On October 24, in Morgantown, in another event, officials of FAPESP and West Virginia University will start negotiations for the establishment of an agreement between the two institutions.

In Toronto, Cambridge and Morgantown an exhibit called Brazilian Nature about the Brazilian biodiversity will be inaugurated on the occasion of these events.

ABOUT FAPESP

São Paulo has a population of 40 million and generates 35% of Brazil’s GDP. Under the state constitution 1% of all state taxes are appropriated to fund FAPESP. The stability of the funding and the autonomy of the foundation allow for efficient management of the resources, having a sizable impact: while São Paulo is home to 22% of the Brazilian population and 30% of all scientists holding a doctorate in the nation, the state responds for 52% of the scientific articles published in international journals coming out of Brazil.

The foundation works in close contact with the scientific community: all proposals are peer reviewed with the help of panels composed of active researchers from the specific area. Many times scientists in São Paulo submit proposals for programs to the foundation which are carefully analyzed and, if deemed strong in academic terms, are shaped by the foundation into research programs that will constitute a set of related research projects in a given area.

Since FAPESP’s mandate is to foster research and scientific and technological development in the state, ideas for programs that couple world class research with contributions that will impact social problems are welcome. The foundation supports large research programs in biodiversity and in information technology.

FAPESP invested R$ 938 million (US$ 560,4 million) in research projects in 2011. One third of this value went to fellowships for graduate and undergraduate students. About 60% went to exploratory academic research. The remaining was invested in application-oriented research, in many cases carried out by small businesses or in joint research between academia and industry. The percentage invested in applied research has been growing in recent years, consistent with the foundation’s mandate to foster scientific and technological development in the State of São Paulo.

FAPESP has cooperation agreements with national and international research funding agencies, higher education and research institutions and business enterprises in many countries. In the United Kingdom, the foundation maintains, among others, agreements with Research Councils UK, the British Council, King’s College London and the universities of London, Edinburgh, Surrey, Southampton, Nottingham, Birmingham and York. In the U.S., FAPESP has agreements with the National Science Foundation, Agilent Technologies, Boeing, Fulbright, MIT, Microsoft Research and several other institutions.

In Canada, FAPESP has agreements with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), the Consortium of Alberta, Laval, Dalhousie and Ottawa (CALDO), ISTPCanada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the universities of Toronto, Western Ontario, McMaster, Simon Fraser, Concordia, York, Ryerson, Victoria and the The University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

More about FAPESP’s international collaboration initiatives and other information is available at: www.fapesp.br/en.