Currently, 15% of collaborative research conducted by researchers from the State of São Paulo and Italy involves companies. In order to strengthen and promote increased interaction between researchers from São Paulo and Italian companies present in São Paulo, FAPESP held the seminar “Italy Day: university, company, government – the creation of an ecosystem” on June 14. The event was part of the celebrations of 150 years of Italian immigration to Brazil.
“The idea is to celebrate the date not only by celebrating what we have built in the past and our common roots, which are naturally very important, but also by discussing what we need to do to invest more in our bilateral exchanges. In this sense, research and innovation in partnership with companies are essential,” Domenico Fornara, Consul General of Italy in São Paulo, told Agência FAPESP.
According to data presented at the event by Marco Antonio Zago, president of FAPESP, scientific and technological cooperation between universities and research institutions based in the State of São Paulo and companies of Italian origin has generated, in the last three years, the annual publication of more than 200 scientific articles.
“The impact of this production is of extremely high quality. It is equivalent to 11 times the world average and 19% of this production is cited in reference policy documents, published by institutions such as the UN [United Nations], the World Health Organization [WHO] and the FAO [UN agency for food and agriculture]”, he highlighted.
The areas of activity of Italian companies with the highest level of cooperation with researchers from the State of São Paulo are health, energy and agriculture. The goal, however, is to extrapolate collaboration with companies from other sectors, said Zago.
“We are taking steps to expand cooperation with companies in the technological, engineering and automotive sectors, among others.”
Among the areas with the greatest potential for increased interaction are sustainable transport, energy transition, artificial intelligence, information technology, life sciences, materials engineering and aerospace, Fornara said.
According to him, of the more than a thousand Italian companies present in Brazil, 60% of them are located in the State of São Paulo. Among them is the tire manufacturer Pirelli.
In Brazil for 94 years, the company has one of its largest factories in the world in Campinas. “We have just opened two research laboratories, one focused on materials and the other for indoor innovation. Furthermore, we have an open research center on asphalt, where tests are carried out in partnership with car manufacturers”, said Mário Batista, vice-president of the company in Brazil.
Some research topics of current interest to the company are tires for electric cars, which are different from those for fuel cars, as well as natural rubber and recycling of waste tires. Today this waste is incinerated. The idea, however, is that it can be used in asphalt and for energy generation.
“This is a field, I believe, in which the rapprochement with FAPESP, which already exists, needs to be increased. There is a great potential for rapprochement”, assessed the executive.
The energy transition and the prediction of extreme climate events are some of the main focuses of research partnerships between Enel Brasil (controlled by the Italian group Enel) with universities and research institutions, said the company's president, Guilherme Lencastre.
“We have to look at climate events, try to have greater predictability and better understand how they are happening, what is changing, what our most critical infrastructures are and how to protect them. This is a path that we can build with academia, which has the best knowledge in this area. We intend to join forces”, added the executive.
Support instruments
Some instruments made available by FAPESP that can be used to foster research collaboration with Italian companies are the Center for Applied Research (CPA), Research Support in Partnership for Technological Innovation (PITE) and Innovative Research in Small Businesses (PIPE) programs. ), pointed out Eduardo Zancul, member of the Deputy Coordination of Research for Innovation at FAPESP.
“FAPESP supports research in partnership between universities and companies and also applied research, in which the project is developed aiming for a practical and defined application, in the medium and long term. These projects provide for the transfer of results to companies. FAPESP does not participate in intellectual property,” he explained.
The CPA program, for example, supports research in partnership between universities and companies in which the latter present a technological challenge and a research center is created with a long-term perspective aimed at developing solutions to the proposed problem.
“These centers are guided by complex problems and, therefore, the perspective needs to be long-term, lasting ten years. The company and FAPESP co-finance the research”, said Zancul.
Currently, there are 27 CPAs in force, which have received investments of more than R$570 million. Among them is the Center for Innovation in New Energies (CINE), launched by FAPESP, Shell Brasil, the State Universities of Campinas (Unicamp) and São Paulo (USP) and the Institute for Energy and Nuclear Research (Ipen) in 2018.
The center's mission is to produce knowledge at the research frontier and, in parallel, transfer technology to the business sector. The research may generate results that will be used by Shell to create startups or establish partnerships with other companies.
“We have a recent partner, which is Itaú. The first phase of the center resulted in almost 500 scientific publications, which received more than 5 thousand citations, in addition to several intellectual properties and some startups”, he said Marcos Gonçalves Quiles, professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and associated researcher at CINE.
On the Italian side, a new bilateral executive protocol is being negotiated, which is strategic for the objective of expanding research collaboration between the two countries to other areas, Fornara said.
The protocol provides for the implementation of a three-year program that supports collaborative projects proposed by two research centers, one in Brazil and the other in Italy. In the latest edition of the program, which covered the years 2021 to 2024, eight research projects were supported on topics such as electricity and green hydrogen production and polymer nanotechnology for the treatment of vector-borne diseases.
“This is a very useful instrument, which we have with the most important international partners in the innovation sector under the umbrella of the bilateral executive protocol under discussion for the years 2025 to 2027. We are in the process of choosing the sectors”, said the consul.
Brazil is Italy's fifth academic partner in the world, pointed out Fabio Naro, scientific attaché at the Italian embassy. “Italian universities have more partnerships with Brazil than with many other European countries”, he compared.
The European country has made efforts to promote the image of an innovative nation. “Italy is known for the arts, fashion, food, cars, but it is not sufficiently recognized and perceived as a country that is the heart of innovation. We were the third country to place a satellite in orbit [after the United States and the extinct USSR] and where many companies and innovations emerged in the last 2 thousand years”, highlighted Fornara.
Also participating in the event were the state secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation, Vahan Agopyan; Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior, rector of USP; Raiane Patrícia Severino Assumpção, dean of Unifesp; Ana Beatriz Oliveira, rector of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar); Dácio Matheus, rector of the Federal University of ABC (UFABC); Marco Túlio Vasconcelos, rector of Mackenzie Presbyterian University; Anderson Correia, executive director of the Technological Research Institute (IPT); Marcio de Castro Silva Filho, scientific director of FAPESP; Fernando Menezes, administrative director of FAPESP; and Carmino Antonio de Souza, member of the Superior Council of FAPESP. (FAPESP Agency)
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