In April 2014, senior post-doctoral researcher, Dr Daniela Ferreira will be traveling to Brazil to visit the top universities of the State of Sao Paulo to promote LSTM as a centre of excellence in research and teaching. She is undertaking this visit in order to attract PhD students from Brazil in the field of tropical medicine, who will be fully funded by the Sciences without Borders (Ciencias sem Fronteiras) programme.
Science without Borders - SwB (Ciência sem Fronteiras) is a Brazilian Government scholarship programme which aims to send 101,000 Brazilian students on undergraduate and PhDs to study at top universities around the world.
Due to the initiative of Dr Ferreira, LSTM is now on the list of eligible institutions participant of this programme. The aim of her visit is to attract excellent Brazilian students to LSTM and to promote increased collaboration with research groups in Brazil.
She will spend time with students at four universities, promoting the scope of research at LSTM, along with the state-of-the art facilities available, including the research laboratories and teaching spaces. She will also present a newwebpage containing the list of potential PhD projects and supervisors.
During her visit she will attend the Butantan Institute (Sao Paulo, Brazil), the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of theUniversity of Sao Paulo (USP), the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences at University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology of University of The State of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP)
If the tour proves successful, she will return to Brazil in December to visit universities in Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, to further introduce LSTM as a potential place for students to complete their post-graduate education.
Talking about the trip, Dr Ferreira said: “LSTM has traditionally had stronger links in Africa than in other low and middle income country settings such as in Latin America. The Brazilian government is rapidly increasing its funding for science and this is a great opportunity to expand LSTM activities in a country in which the burden of tropical diseases is really high”.
As a result of the visit, Dr Ferreira is also engaging with communication departments of the two major Brazilian funding agencies CNpQ and FAPESP to advertise LSTM PhD programme on their websites and research newsletter.