Popular with foreigners looking for sun, sea and samba, Brazil wants to transform into a hot destination for seekers of science. Though its own brightest graduates still head to Europe or the United States for Ph Ds or post-doctoral fellowships, nowadays that is more because science is an international affair rather than because they cannot study at home. The country wants more of them to return afterwards, and for the traffic to become two-way.
Brazil is no longer a scientific also-ran. It produces 500,000 graduates and 10,000 Ph Ds a year, ten times more than two decades ago. Between 2002 and 2008 its share of the world’s scientific papers rose from 1.7 percent to 2.7 percent. It is a world leader in research on tropical medicine, bioenergy and plant biology. It spends 1 percent of its fast-growing GDP on research, half the rich-world share but almost double the average in the rest of Latin America. Its scientists are increasingly collaborating with those abroad: 30 percent of scientific papers by Brazilians now have a foreign co-author.
Becoming part of the global scientific endeavour is more than just about national pride. By doing their own science, developing tropical countries can make sure that it is not only the problems of people in rich, temperate nations that get solved.
São Paulo, Brazil’s richest state, is leading the effort. It has the country’s best universities, including the only two that make it into the top 300 in both of the best-known global rankings. Its constitution guarantees the state research foundation, known as FAPESP, 1 percent of the state government’s tax take. That amounted to $450 million (Rs.2,205 crore) in 2010, and comes on top of money from the federal government.
This allows São Paulo to offer the money and facilities to attract foreign researchers. That will remain essential for a while. Brazil is short of established scientists, a legacy of the dire condition of its schools, even if they are now improving. “We have money, and plenty of ideas,” says Glaucia Mendes Souza, an expert on sugarcane genomics at the University of São Paulo who co-ordinates FAPESP’s bioenergy research. “We need more research groups, and more people to lead them.”
Perhaps the main thing Brazil can offer scientists is plenty of room to grow. “You can have your own laboratory here,” says Anete Pereira de Souza, a plant geneticist at the University of Campinas, another big São Paulo state university. “You can start an entire new area of research. Here, you’re a pioneer.”
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)