Six initiatives of the Brazilian Ministry for Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI) have been included in the country’s new Growth Acceleration Plan (PAC), announced by the federal government in August. Investments are forecast at a total R$7.9 billion by the end of 2026. The greater part of these funds, totaling R$4.4 billion, is linked to Pró-infra, a program set up two decades ago to upgrade and expand the research infrastructure across universities and science & technology institutes; bid invitations are expected to be issued over the coming years to modernize laboratories and encourage the construction of facilities in regions where there are few in place, such as the North, Northeast, and Midwest.
Large-scale projects are also planned: R$1 billion is earmarked for Orion, a group of biosecurity laboratories in Campinas, inland São Paulo State, including Brazil’s first maximum-containment facility to manipulate highly pathogenic and lethal microorganisms. Interestingly, there are plans for this project’s connection with Sirius, a fourth-generation synchrotron light laboratory that began operations in 2020, and the largest and most complex scientific infrastructure facility ever built in Brazil. Both facilities belong to the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), a social organization funded by the MCTI, which also runs units for nanotechnology, biology, and renewable fuel research. With this integration Orion will use three lines of synchrotron light sources and will be capable of analyzing the structure of samples manipulated in the laboratory. There are also plans for investment in the second phase of Sirius: the idea is to earmark R$800 million for construction of a further 10 synchrotron light source lines — there are currently 14 sources operating or being installed.
An endowment of R$1 billion has been promised for the Brazilian Multipurpose Reactor (RMB), with the aim of producing radioisotopes for use in medicine and industry. Conceived in 2008, the project never went ahead due to a lack of funding. RNP (National Education and Research Network) information highways are set to receive R$640 million. The plan is to extend long-distance optical fiber networks to provide high-speed internet to universities and research institutions in the Brazilian interior. To complete this package, the Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring (CEMADEN), which prevents and warns on the risk of natural catastrophes, will receive R$50 million. The funds will be used to install facilities, seeking to increase the number of municipalities covered by the center from 1,038 to some 1,800 over the next four years.
IpenGraphic of biosecurity laboratorie the Brazilian Multipurpose Reactor in Iperó: investments to deal with lethal microorganisms and manufacture radiopharmaceuticalsIpen
“Inclusion of these projects in the PAC highlights the importance of science, technology, and innovation in promoting a new development cycle in Brazil, and enables society to follow these initiatives,” says MCTI executive secretary Luis Fernandes. The investments are boosted by the federal government’s intention to apply resources from the National Scientific and Technological Development Fund (FNDCT), the primary federal funding source for research, which since 2016 has been the victim of successive and substantial funding reallocations. A law passed in April freed up R$4.18 billion from the FNDCT, which had been blocked when the 2023 budget was voted upon, and the total available in 2023 therefore reached R$9.96 billion. There is, however, a degree of uncertainty around the capacity to maintain a stable flow of funding over the coming years, after the Brazilian Congress approved the Sustainable Fiscal Regime, known as the fiscal framework, which provides for possible blockage of FNDTC funds if the government is unable to control its indebtedness.
Past inconsistencies in federal funding of science put constraints on conducting or concluding large-scale infrastructure projects. The reactor (RMB) is a recent example: its aim is to provide autonomy in the production of radioisotopes, primarily used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals for the diagnosis and treatment of a range of diseases, but also having applications in energy, industry, nuclear materials and fuels, agriculture, and the environment. “The aim of the RMB is for Brazil to go from importer of radioisotopes to exporter,” says Patrícia Pagetti, a researcher from the Institute for Energy and Nuclear Research (IPEN) and technical coordinator of the project. The initial schedule forecast conclusion of the RMB in 2014, but to date it is a construction site in an area of 2 million square meters in Iperó (São Paulo). Some R$285 million has already been spent on the project for architectural and engineering designs, and for some of the works. There will still be a need to invest R$2.5 billion in the project — the forecast PAC amount of R$1 billion ensures the resumption of works, but will not be enough to conclude them.
The initiative has been abandoned for the last five years. In 2021, the federal budget did not have the funds to import radiopharmaceuticals, which came to be lacking in hospitals (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 309). If there is sufficient funding, the RMB will be finished in 2029, with a forecast lifespan of 50 years. There are four nuclear reactors dedicated to research in Brazil: two in São Paulo, one in Rio de Janeiro, and one in Minas Gerais, however these are old structures with performance limits. The RMB power feed will be 30 megawatts, six times more than the most powerful reactor currently operating in Brazil.
Sluggishness in conclusion of a large-scale research facility gives rise to adverse effects that go beyond its unavailability for a longer period than forecast. When it was designed around 10 years ago, Sirius’s only competitor was a similar facility in Sweden, and this gave the Brazilian scientific matter analysis community the opportunity to undertake studies that few around the world would be capable of doing. Facilities these days are still very competitive, but vie with other countries having similar sources, such as France and, shortly, China.
CemadenSituation room at the Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring (CEMADEN): increase in the number of municipalities coveredCemaden
The synchrotron light source is a type of wide-spectrum electromagnetic radiation — starting with infrared light, transitioning through ultraviolet radiation, and attaining X-rays — which is produced when charged particles, accelerated to velocities close to the speed of light in a tunnel, are diverted by super-strong magnets. Synchrotron light channeled into research stations can penetrate matter and reveal the characteristics of its molecular and atomic structure.
Sirius was designed to receive up to 38 lines of light dedicated to different techniques and applications. For now, there are 14 lines forecast for Phase 1, and these will be fully operative in 2025. Planned PAC funds will be allocated to the installation of a further 10 lines, additional to the three earmarked for Orion, with completion scheduled for the end of 2027. “This expansion will provide greater capacity to investigate the most diverse materials in different space and time scales,” explains Antônio José Roque da Silva, director general of CNPEM. “To understand how the brain works, for example, this diversity of scales is essential.” Roque is set to begin more effective planning of the third and last project phase.
The most ambitious scientific initiative planned under the PAC is Orion, and its conception cannot be disassociated from the recent pandemic experience. A complex of biosecurity laboratories that includes one in the NB4 category, Orion enables viruses of high pathogenicity and mortality, for which there are neither medications nor vaccines, to be manipulated.
The only virus in this category identified to date in Brazil is the sabiá (SABV), which causes hemorrhagic fever. This condition was first diagnosed in humans in the 1990s, and after almost 20 years without being reported, two cases were identified in 2019. Research requiring the manipulation of this pathogen cannot be undertaken in Brazil due to a lack of appropriate infrastructure. There are 60 such laboratories around the world, but none to date in South America. A maximum biosecurity facility will make it possible to isolate and monitor biological agents and assist in the development of diagnosis methods, vaccines, and therapies. The connection with the three synchrotron light lines will enable analysis of cell and tissue structures, and tomography scans of small animals contaminated by pathogens.
National Education & Research Network (RNP)Layouts of information highway projects in the states of Pará, Goiás, and Bahia: R$640 million to provide high-velocity internet to research institutions in the interiorNational Education & Research Network (RNP)
The R$4.4 billion earmarked for Pró-infra, a program operated by the Brazilian Funding Authority for Studies and Projects (FINEP), is aimed at expanding and providing competitiveness across the network of thousands of university and research-institution laboratories. Fernandes, of the MCTI, says that the criteria for distribution of the funds and calls for tender are still being defined. He goes on to say that in addition to the need to modernize the infrastructure, the investments will consider criteria such as the decentralization of scientific activity in Brazil. Partnerships with state-level research foundations will receive federal cofunding of 4:1 in the North, and 3:1 in the Northeast and Midwest; they will be more equally balanced in the South and Southeast. Another goal is to streamline relations with private initiative to increase the participation of corporations in science, technology, and innovation investments in Brazil. “Investments in countries that have made great strides in innovation are 20% public and 80% private. Here in Brazil, we are still at half-and-half,” confirms Fernandes.
The funds for the MCTI are a small part — slightly more than 0.5% — of the amount involved in the New PAC, which plans public and private disbursements to the tune of R$1.78 trillion. “In the case of science and technology projects, the PAC should be seen as an attempt to organize investments and set priorities,” says economist Fernanda De Negri of the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA). She believes that the mixture of large-scale facilities for multiple users, and updated basic infrastructure, seeks to meet the immediate and medium-term needs of the scientific community. De Negri highlights the importance of large projects to confer scale and more competitiveness upon Brazilian scientific output, but also indicates the requirement to update and modernize a series of laboratories and research facilities that received no investment over recent years and account for a significant proportion of scientific output in the country. “It’s the smaller laboratories that sustain Brazilian scientific output. It will certainly not be a case of suddenly deciding that the investments will only go to the big projects.” However, she warns that long-term funds will be needed for Brazil to deal with the challenges of research in areas such as climate change and the energy transition. “It’s the only way Brazil will be able to create scale to promote high-level research,” she concludes.
The strategy for the Infovias RNP (information highways) program is to widen connectivity and security coverage for education and research, expanding into all Brazilian regions. The investments will go into implementing 18 new state-level information highways, along with eight regional, and two national. The optics infrastructure will be shared among education and research organizations using the RNP system and the partner state-government network. Under these initiatives there will be more than 40,000 km of optical fiber, with the aspiration of reaching 1,328 universities, institutes, and education, research, and innovation centers, 180,000 researchers, 3,880 graduate programs, and 12 innovation facilities and technological parks. “As well as enhancing research, we will make advances in digital inclusion and skills-enabling among the Brazilian population, primarily in the more remote regions,” says RNP institutional relations director Gorgonio Araújo. “The aim is to move increasingly into the interior so that research, internet access, and data traffic are similarly accessible as those in the large urban centers and in any other part of the country,” says Araújo.
The R$50 million allocated to the CEMADEN, a research unit linked to the MCTI, will be used to expand the geographical coverage of warnings issued by the institution on the risk of slope landslides, flash and other floods, and droughts, and which support the work of Civil Defence units. The municipalities to be included are not yet defined, but it is projected that the Brazilian population covered will increase from 55.7% to approximately 70%. “Some of the money will be allocated to modernizing our Information Technology Park, which was conceived in 2011 and is in need of updating,” says CEMADEN director Regina Alvalá.
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