The University of São Paulo (USP) has created an agency to analyze compliance in entrepreneurial activities by its faculty staff and research collaborations with companies or other institutions. The aim is to provide security to those promoting innovation in the academic environment, and ensure that cooperation with the private sector is not compromised by conflicts of interest and ethical deviations. The Office for the Integrity and Protection of Research acts on two fronts: one seeks to provide institutional backing to researchers setting up companies, selling technologies, or maintaining partnerships with the industrial sector. “The idea is for faculty staff to contact the office and outline the scope of the initiatives they want to develop. If there are no issues, the university will rubber-stamp their activities,” says physicist Paulo Alberto Nussenzveig, USP’s associate dean for research and innovation.
He says the intention is to remove constraints from the routine of entrepreneurial faculty staff. “Researchers who set up businesses or go into partnership with companies are sometimes treated like crooks by colleagues, as if they were harming the public. That is a fallacy; they generate wealth, return the money society has invested in them in the form of taxes, and deserve to be supported by the university,” says the associate dean, who seeks to reduce uncertainties in academic entrepreneurship.
The second mission of the office is to ensure that research at USP follows international standards of integrity and data protection, also defining roles and assessing compliance in projects. “In any collaboration, no one wants to be the weak link through which sensitive information leaks. For USP to remain relevant in international cooperation, we need to follow the same knowledge protection mechanisms as our partners,” explains Nussenzveig, citing as an example the need to protect information on biodiversity. “We are urged to disclose the genetic resources used in our research, but the way we dealt with them until recently was inadequate. A document was opened in Google, and collaborators were asked to send the information via a totally insecure channel. You might as well have said: ‘biopirates of the world, the information is centralized here so you can get it in one swipe.’” The idea is also for the office to act as a consultancy, analyzing requests from researchers about data protection and the requirements of international networks.
According to Nussenzveig, the office was created after incorporating innovation into the proposals of the USP Office of the Associate Dean for Research, which took place in 2022. He and the assistant associate dean for innovation, engineer Raúl González Lima, visited several universities to see how they deal with the question of innovation, observing that they had offices in place with these characteristics.
One example was an agency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the remit of evaluating and reducing risk in the activities of its researchers: staff analyze whether there are conflicts of interest in collaborations and set controls for technology transfer to entities in other countries. They also verify whether cooperation complies with Brazilian federal regulations: partnerships are not permitted with countries sanctioned by the USA, such as North Korea, Iran, and Cuba.
The aim of the office is to support interaction between the university and the private sector
Visits by MIT to these countries must be communicated in advance, with a number of security measures taken. To prevent information leaks, no personal-use computers or cell phones may be taken—the institute provides secure equipment for temporary use. “I attended a conference on data integrity and protection in the United States, and I was impressed by the agenda; it was like something from the Cold War. That’s when the penny dropped that we were being naïve about the security of information,” says Nussenzveig.
Early processes analyzed by the office were cases of low complexity; its chamber dealing with conflicts of interest and compliance is currently scrutinizing two cases: one involves a professor who set up a company and would like to continue full-time on the USP faculty, although he will have to divide his time between that and his private affairs. The case is being evaluated, but there is a provision in the university statute permitting this to happen, provided there is a declaration of the university’s interest.
“As there was previously no framework to issue this type of declaration, the office must assume the task in line with the other instances of the university,” says the associate dean. Another case involves a researcher who maintains a partnership with a company accused of questionable behavior and ethical deviations. The chamber is looking at the benefits of this partnership against the reputational damage it may cause. The challenge, says Nussenzveig, is to incentivize collaboration while preventing companies with dubious behavior from using the respectability of USP to legitimize their image.
Angela Kaysel Cruz, a researcher at the USP Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine with an interest in scientific integrity, believes that the creation of the office is a welcome initiative because it also deals with important issues within the university. “I know of the case of a dedicated, full-time professor who had a company and is now facing a lawsuit,” she says. Nonetheless, she considers that a robust structure such as that of the office will have the capacity to deal with wide-ranging scientific integrity issues, such as plagiarism and fraud. Since 2017, USP has maintained a Good Scientific Practices committee to promote educational actions, while misconduct cases are examined by ethics commissions. “Even more investment is needed to boost the integrity culture. I’ve seen USP professors fired for misconduct, but also other cases involving serious failures, including people who defended scientifically unproven treatments during the pandemic, where no action has been taken,” she adds.
The new office, groundbreaking in Brazil, is under the watchful eye of other institutions. “The USP initiative anticipates and offers a response to growing concerns among universities having partnerships with companies. It is essential to ensure the compliance of innovation projects,” says Jorge Audy, Superintendent of the Scientific and Technological Park at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (TECNOPUC), which plans to set up a similar structure.
In addition to creating the office, USP is a cofounder of the South American Consortium for Research Security (SARSEC), covering universities in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) are Brazil’s participants in this collective. Representatives met for the first time in May at the USP campus, discussing research security, technology transfer, precautions in signing legal documents, and critical systems security.
The story above was published with the title “Shielding innovation” in issue 352 of April/2025.
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