Frontiers of Science has report on Brazilian meeting

Royal Society releases a publication with the results of UK-Brazil Frontiers of Science Meeting that brought together 70 Brazilian and British researchers.

Agência FAPESP – The Royal Society, the academy of science in the United Kingdom, has just published the report on the UK-Brazil Frontiers of Science Meeting, containing the main results of debates held during the meeting of the same name held in Itatiba (SP) in August 2010.

The four-day symposium was part of the program of Frontiers of Science, a series of meetings held periodically by the Royal Society in diverse countries with the objective of stimulating participants to reflect on the new directions of their fields, as well as other areas of knowledge.

The publication offers summaries of every session in the symposium, a list of participants, the main topics debated and the researchers’ considerations about the event.

The event was organized by the Royal Society and FAPESP in partnership with the British Council, the Academia Brasileira de Ciências, the Academia Chilena de Ciências and the UK-Brazil Cooperation in Science and Innovation.

“The Royal Society had its 350-year anniversary in 2010 and conducted a series of commemorative events. The choice of Brazil to host one of the main events commemorating that special date shows the significance the country has in the international science world,” commented one of the coordinators of the event, Marcelo Knobel, graduate dean at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), to Agência FAPESP.

In addition to Knobel, the organization committee was coordinated by Richard Kirby, of the Science and Engineering School of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.

Researchers holding doctorate degrees for less than 20 years and with renowned leadership in academia were selected to participate in the symposium. In addition to the 27 speakers and 16 members of the organizing committee, another 27 researchers were invited to participate in the debates.

The debates covered an extraordinary array of research areas, including biofuels, cerebral plasticity, mathematical modeling of populations and diseases, scientific journalism, quantum entanglement and the effects of climate change on plant development.

The Frontiers of Science program was originally conceived by the geophysicist Frank Press, president of the American Academy of Sciences from 1981-1993. The first meeting occurred in 1989. The format was adapted by the Royal Society in 2004 and since then the Brazilian academy has organized meetings in several countries.

“The speeches were general – since they were presented to scientists from other areas – contextualizing the topics covered. The objective was to promote discussion so that each participant could broaden their research horizons, reflecting on subjects that we normally don’t have the opportunity to cover due to the specialization of science,” Knobel.

For Knobel, who is also a member of the coordination team in FAPESP’s Physics area, this dynamic is very enriching, mainly when one takes into account the profile of participants.

“As scientists that still have much work ahead, this contact with major scientific issues from all areas made possible by the symposium will tend to generate international partnerships and collaborations,” he affirmed.

The UK-Brazil Frontiers of Science Meeting report can be accessed at www.fapesp.br/publicacoes/UKBrazil_FOS_report.pdf.
 
More information can be found at: Frontiers of Science: http://royalsociety.org/Frontiers-of-Science.