{"id":68883,"date":"2011-04-20T12:40:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T15:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=68883"},"modified":"2012-12-20T16:14:19","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T18:14:19","slug":"attracting-talent-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/attracting-talent-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Attracting talent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in September 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\" LAURA DAVI\u00d1A<\/span>At a time when the importance of becoming international for Brazilian science is being increasingly discussed, the group of researchers led by physicist, Marcelo Knobel, a full professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), is showing how the interchange of experiences between post-graduate students from different nationalities has the ability to breathe new life into a research environment and attract more researchers from outside, in a virtuous circle. Since 1990, Knobel, 42, has been coordinating a group dedicated to research into new magnetic materials that is based in the Laboratory of Magnetism and Low Temperatures (LMBT<\/em>) of the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, at Unicamp.\u00a0As the group has collaboration agreements with scientists from several countries and is internationally recognized, Knobel often receives messages from foreign students interested in doing Master’s degrees, PhDs and post-doctoral studies at Unicamp.\u00a0He always assesses requests with interest and with the help of the university and research funding agencies, has managed to attract people from various countries to his laboratory – currently it has PhD students and post-doctoral fellows from India, Spain, Chile, Colombia and Canada.\u00a0 \u201cIn addition to the interest of researchers, it helps a lot that we have scholarships that provide amounts that are very competitive internationally,\u201d says Knobel.\u00a0\u201cThey come to Brazil stimulated by the chance of working in an environment where it is possible to carry out cutting edge research and even build up a little nest egg,\u201d said the professor, who is now also Unicamp\u2019s Undergraduate Studies pro-dean.<\/p>\n

Canadian Fanny Beron is one of the post-doctoral fellows working in Knobel\u2019s group.\u00a0She did undergraduate and Master’s degrees and her PhD in engineering physics at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and in 2007 she was looking for a university in a foreign country to do post-doctoral studies.\u00a0It was her tutor, Arthur Yelon, who was collaborating with Knobel, who suggested Unicamp.\u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t want to go to the US, because I already knew the way of American life very well and I couldn\u2019t find place in Europe that had a good laboratory in an interesting city,\u201d says Fanny, who does not regret her choice.\u00a0\u201cI have easy access to equipment that I didn\u2019t have in Montreal, I\u2019m working with a good group that produces a lot and I have the opportunity to collaborate with several high-level researchers,\u201d she says.\u00a0Recently, she exchanged the post-doctoral scholarship she received from a Canadian institution for one from FAPESP, which is worth R$5,028.90 a month.\u00a0\u201cThe amount was similar but FAPESP provides a very useful technical reserve for going to conferences,\u201d she explains.\u00a0\u201cI know that research conditions at Unicamp are better than elsewhere in Brazil.\u00a0Brazil is not a traditional choice for young foreign researchers, who generally prefer the United States and Europe, but here I found everything I needed and I also had the opportunity to get to know South America better,\u201d she concludes.<\/p>\n

Another foreign researcher who is satisfied with his experience at Unicamp is Spaniard Jacob Torrej\u00f3n Diaz, who has just completed a year-long post-doctoral program in Knobel\u2019s group and is preparing to undertake new post-doctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Paris, at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS<\/em>).\u00a0In 2009, when he finished his PhD in nanostructured materials at the Autonomous University of Madrid, he saw that the alternatives for post-doctoral study in Europe were limited.\u00a0\u201cIt was the beginning of the economic crisis and most of the scholarship programs and research contracts were drastically cut,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0He knew Professor Kleber Pirota, from Marcelo Knobel\u2019s group, who suggested Unicamp to him.\u00a0\u201cHe told me about open flow research grants from FAPESP, which were approved very quickly, within one or two months, while in Europe most agencies take a year to award a scholarship.\u00a0I thought the research project, the equipment in the Laboratory of Magnetism and Low Temperatures and the economic conditions of the scholarship were all very attractive and interesting. So, I came to Brazil,\u201d he says.\u00a0On the eve of leaving the country, he considers his time at Unicamp to have been very useful to him.\u00a0 \u201cI learned different magnetic characterization techniques, cryogenics, measurement techniques in the Synchrotron and the use of powerful apparatus, in addition to learning Portuguese and about the wonderful culture of Brazil,\u201d he says.\u00a0He also developed work in different areas, from ferromagnetic resonance to isolated nanowires, which is being published in international journals. \u201cI’m happy to have contributed to improving the equipment in the laboratory.\u00a0I played an active part in assembling the nanostructures manufacturing lab.\u00a0My time here served to establish a collaboration that I hope will be long-lasting,\u201d he states.<\/p>\n

According to Marcelo Knobel, the concentration of students from Latin America has meant that two languages have been adopted in the laboratory: in addition to English, which is the lingua<\/em> franca<\/em> of science, \u201cportunhol<\/em>\u201d can also be heard.\u00a0Fanny and Torrej\u00f3n Diaz worked with researchers, like Indian, Surender Kumar Sharma, who did his first degree, Master\u2019s and PhD in physics at the Himachal Pradesh University, and who, since 2007, has been at Unicamp, with a grant from FAPESP.\u00a0\u201cI started collaborating with Surender when he was doing his PhD and then he decided to come here,\u201d\u00a0 recalls Knobel.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s an interesting aspect in his case. He has just managed to bring his wife here, who has also succeeded in getting a post-doctoral grant in biology, also from FAPESP,\u201d he states.\u00a0The group also has students like Chilean, Lenina Valenzuela, a physicist from the University of Santiago, who since 2007, with Knobel as her tutor, has been doing a PhD in magnetoimpedance, with a grant from the Coordinating Office for\u00a0 the Improvement of People with Higher Education (\u00a0Capes<\/em>).\u00a0All foreigners work with Brazilian Master’s and basic scientific undergraduate research students, who, according to Knobel, benefit not only from the shared knowledge and experience but also from the opportunity to become acquainted with other languages and with an international research environment.<\/p>\n

\"\" LAURA DAVI\u00d1A<\/span>Bureaucratic tasks<\/strong>
\nKnobel says that it is not enough to be willing to bring in foreign researchers; institutional support is also fundamental.\u00a0\u201cIn other countries, the leader of a research group receives a grant and has the autonomy to manage the funds and bring people from outside. Here in Brazil that is not how it happens.\u00a0It has only worked because Unicamp has strong globalization goals and actively looks for new partnerships for student exchanges,\u201d he says.\u00a0The researcher warns, however, that there are still several hurdles to be overcome, which often end up overloading the group leader with bureaucratic tasks, such as obtaining visas and even helping guest students find a place to live.\u00a0The pro-dean of Research at Unicamp, Ronaldo Pilli, confirms that there are still difficulties. \u201cI had to be the guarantor of the rent of a foreign guest researcher who I brought into my group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Knobel\u2019s group attracts attention because of the diversity of its foreign researchers, but his is far from being an isolated example at Unicamp.\u00a0A PhD grant program established by the CNPq<\/em> in partnership with the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) has brought in groups of Pakistani students who are interested in doing a PhD at the university\u2019s Institute of Chemistry (IQ<\/em>).\u00a0\u201cThe interesting thing is that this process has a knock-on effect and I\u2019m getting more and more requests from Pakistanis interested in coming to Brazil,\u201d says Pilli, who is a professor at the IQ<\/em>.\u00a0There is another successful example in the field of basic undergraduate scientific research, also in the area of chemistry.\u00a0This is a pilot program from FAPESP and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which promotes the exchange of undergraduate students in chemistry from universities in S\u00e3o Paulo and the US.\u00a0The opportunity, in this case is two way: students from Unicamp do internships in the US and American students come to Brazil to do the same.\u00a0One of the students who participated in the program, Ricardo Barroso Ferreira, 21, was recently the co-author of an article in the journal, Science.\u00a0Because of the internship he did at the University of California, in Los Angeles, he participated in a project that resulted in the creation of a three-dimensional synthetic crystal capable of capturing carbon dioxide emissions, which was the theme of the Science article.<\/p>\n

Unicamp has a strategy to expand its globalization.\u00a0According to the pro-dean, Ronaldo Pilli, in 2009 a project started that aims to attract foreign visiting professors to teach short courses.\u00a0A public bid notice, issued last year in partnership with the Undergraduate Pro-Dean\u2019s office, received 60 proposals from departments interested in bringing visiting professors to teach on post-graduate courses lasting at most two months.\u00a0Twenty-seven proposals were selected and Unicamp is going to invest R$ 400,000 in the first year. There is also an effort to attract visiting researchers for longer periods.\u00a0The goal is to offer scholarships for one to two years for people who are of interest to departments, with the chance of the person becoming a candidate for a teaching position at the end of the scholarship period. Advertisements in international scientific journals, like Nature and Science, attracted more than 50 interested people, who sent their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s to Unicamp, which were scrutinized by the departments.\u00a0Those selected were invited to visit the university and there are already two of them, a Canadian and a Frenchman, who will spend up to two years at Unicamp as from March.\u00a0\u201cWe are not only interested in bringing foreigners here, but also in repatriating Brazilian researchers who are working abroad,\u201d says Pilli.\u00a0To facilitate the inclusion of these researchers, Unicamp is planning to change the selection rules for certain categories of teachers, to allow the tests to be done in a foreign language.<\/p>\n

Also in the education field, Unicamp is working hard towards globalization.\u00a0Each semester the institution receives about 100 foreign undergraduate and post-graduate students, most of them from Latin American countries with which the university has agreements; the total number of foreigners studying at Unicamp ranges between 800 and 1000 students.\u00a0\u201cDemand is great from students from countries like Peru and Colombia, who see Unicamp as a reference point in the exact sciences and engineering,\u201d says physicist Leandro Tessler, who is responsible for the Institutional and International Relations Coordination Office (Cori<\/em>).\u00a0He said that the university has made efforts to establish agreements with American and European universities.\u00a0“There is room to grow, especially with the United States,” he says.\u00a0The idea, according to Tessler, is to apply in education the same strategy that is used in research.\u00a0“The university shows its credentials when it gets exposure in the outside world.\u00a0In research, we adopt international standards and we have become recognized. We are now doing the same with education,\u201d he says.\u00a0One of the advantages is having students from Unicamp make contact with different ideas.\u00a0“Brazilian university groups are very homogeneous and it is good to have more diversity,” he says.\u00a0But the fundamental goal is to ensure a globalized higher education.\u00a0“Students become more competitive when they have international experience,” Tessler states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Group distinguishes itself by bringing researchers from other countries","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-68883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cover"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68883"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=68883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}