On the second day of the 10th Annual Meeting, CISB held the Mobility program boosting innovation, a discussion focused on the role of mobility in innovation and information in companies.
Alessandra Holmo, executive director of CISB, started the panel with a contextualization of the CNPq-CISB partnership, signed in September 2011. The agreement had a partnership with the Swedish company Saab AB and made available 100 doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, distributed in four calls for projects. 44 scholarships were granted within the scope of the Science Without Borders Program and among the beneficiaries, were the guests of the webinar Danilo Carastan, associate professor at the Federal University of ABC and Luís Gonzaga Trabasso, retired professor at ITA and currently Chief Researcher at the SENAI Institute for Innovation in Laser Processing in Santa Catarina.
Trabasso opened the discussion by commenting that his motivation to pursue a postdoc in Sweden was due to the rate of 80% of aviation accidents and incidents being caused by human factors. “This number has always bothered me and I saw this opportunity as a way to bring research to Brazil. So, I studied and researched laboratories in Sweden and for my post-doctorate, I presented an implementation action plan for a Human Factors laboratory at ITA. ”Said the founder of the ITA Manufacturing Competence center.
UFABC professor Danilo Carastan said that he had no previous contact with the projects or with Sweden when he learned about the initiative through disclosure at UFABC. “When I saw an opportunity, I was interested, but it felt like something far from reality. But I thought that if right, the results and partnerships could be very interesting. And so, in 2015 with the support from CISB, I went to Sweden to discuss projects in partnership with Saab. Definitely a challenging experience, but with very positive results. “
The general coordinator of international cooperation at CNPq, Lelio Fellows Filho, reiterated the importance of the partnership with CISB . “For us at CNPq, it is very gratifying to hear the testimonies of scholarship students, to see their successful trajectories years later, which encourages us to continue with the work.”
The bureaucratic issue of Brazil compared to Sweden was also addressed in the panel. “We had the opportunity to write a project with bilateral funding and I had to deal with the legal part of the two countries, and there it was a shock. The forms in Sweden were extremely straightforward with only a few pages, whereas those in Brazil were much larger, but contained the same information. I understood that trust reflects the ease of things, so it was one of the lessons I learned and I really believe that we need to mirror ourselves more in this Swedish aspect. ” commented Trabasso.
Fellows added that for national agencies, the challenge is the same. “It is necessary to reform these standards and automate these processes, something that is already happening, but slowly. I believe that the issue of risk and error is something that is not culturally embedded in brazilians. We believe that success only happens if there is no error or if we are not at risk, when in fact it is the opposite. You have to make mistakes to learn, to risk to succeed. This perception is important to change the mindset of researchers and companies. ” said,
During the webinar, the guests discussed project continuity, university-business interaction, inclusion in innovation and the challenge of seeking partnerships with more companies and institutions. “The National Institutes of Science and Technology (INCT’s), have a fundamental role in bringing the business vision to the research centers. The new scholarships offered by us are expected to provide master’s and doctoral training in a business environment, that is, to develop research and production with the company’s vision. CNPq is focusing in this direction because it aims precisely at attracting future companies that can collaborate and carry out more important projects. ”concluded the engineer, Lelio Fellows.
Alessandra Holmo ended the session by stating that new actions and joint calls from the fruitful partnership between CNPq, CISB and Saab AB will be announced by the end of 2020.
To watch the full webinar on our YouTube Channel, visit: https://youtu.be/lnW_I0yYPHk