About

FAPESP is a public taxpayer-funded foundation that has the mission of supporting research in all fields of knowledge within the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research may be delivered only by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, companies, higher education and research organizations in other countries known by the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration.

As part of these efforts and also in the context of the celebrations of its Golden Jubilee, the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) organized seminars and exhibitions in Washington, Morgantown and Cambridge, in the United States, Toronto, Canada, Salamanca and Madrid, in Spain, and in Tokyo, Japan.

In September, FAPESP will organize the FAPESP Week London at the Royal Society. The symposium aims at strengthening the links between Brazilian and European investigators with the objective of promoting better research.

The Royal Society is committed to innovative science wherever it is found. World class research and development in UK industry is essential for transforming innovative ideas into commercially successful products, economic growth and securing the science base. The Society will be proactive in anticipating, understanding and responding to the needs of industry scientists, and will facilitate increased participation in Society activities. Symposia and meetings with high industry interest will be added to the Society’s calendar, which already includes long-standing initiatives in scientific excellence such as the Royal Society Industry Fellowship and the Brian Mercer Awards for Innovation and Feasibility. The Year will bring a renewed focus on engaging with the industrial sector to develop cogent arguments that high level investment in the UK science base is essential for international competitiveness.

Building on the Royal Society’s commitment to innovative scientific research, the Year of Science and Industry will showcase excellence in UK industrial science and strengthen links between the Society, industry, academia and the public. 

The São Paulo Research Foundation, FAPESP

São Paulo has a population of 40 million and generates 35% of Brazil’s GDP. Under the state constitution 1% of all state taxes are appropriated to fund FAPESP. The stability of the funding and the autonomy of the foundation allow for efficient management of the resources, having a sizable impact: while São Paulo is home to 22% of the Brazilian population and 30% of all scientists holding a doctorate in the nation, the state responds for 52% of the scientific articles published in international journals coming out of Brazil.

The foundation works in close contact with the scientific community: all proposals are peer reviewed with the help of panels composed of active researchers from the specific area. Many times scientists in São Paulo submit proposals for programs to the foundation which are carefully analyzed and, if deemed strong in academic terms, are shaped by the foundation into research programs that will constitute a set of related research projects in a given area.

Since FAPESP’s mandate is to foster research and scientific and technological development in the state, ideas for programs that couple world class research with contributions that will impact social problems are welcome. The foundation supports large research programs in biodiversity and in information technology.

FAPESP invested around US$ 500 million in research projects in 2012. One third of this value went to fellowships for graduate and undergraduate students. About 60% went to exploratory academic research. The remaining was invested in application-oriented research, in many cases carried out by small businesses or in joint research between academia and industry. The percentage invested in applied research has been growing in recent years, consistent with the foundation’s mandate to foster scientific and technological development in the State of São Paulo.

FAPESP has cooperation agreements with national and international research funding agencies, higher education and research institutions and business enterprises in many countries. In the United Kingdom, the foundation maintains, among others, agreements with Research Councils UK, the British Council, King’s College London and the universities of London, Edinburgh, Surrey, Southampton, Nottingham, Birmingham and York. In the U.S., FAPESP has agreements with the National Science Foundation, Agilent Technologies, Boeing, Fulbright, MIT, Microsoft Research and several other institutions.

In Canada, FAPESP has agreements with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), the Consortium of Alberta, Laval, Dalhousie and Ottawa (CALDO), ISTPCanada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the universities of Toronto, Western Ontario, McMaster, Simon Fraser, Concordia, York, Ryerson, Victoria and the The University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

More about FAPESP’s international collaboration initiatives and other information is available at: www.fapesp.br/en.