Brazil’s Science Without Borders programme, launched just last summer (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, August 2011), is off and running. Its key objective is to facilitate international study and research experiences for up to 100 000 Brazilian students and young researchers, largely (although not exclusively) through publicly funded scholarships. As the programme name implies, the focus is on the STEM fields and has components designed for students at the bachelor, graduate and post-doctoral levels. There is also an action line providing support for foreign scientists and researchers who may wish to visit and collaborate with Brazilian higher education institutions.

The first cohort of undergraduate scholarship recipients was selected in the final quarter of 2011 and, as of early January 2012, has been received in the United States. ACA’s US member, IIE, is the coordinating organisation there, and has indicated that 1 500 additional students are expected to arrive in the US in the summer or autumn of 2012. Meanwhile, the second call for undergraduate scholarship applications (which is significantly larger than the first) is due to close on 31 January 2012 and provides opportunities for students to study not only in the US, but also in France (in cooperation with ACA’s French member, CampusFrance), Germany (in coordination with ACA’s German member, DAAD), Italy (in collaboration with the University of Bologna) and in the United Kingdom (with the support of Universities UK).

A small number of special calls have also been announced. So far, these involve the support of one corporate partner, specifically GlaxoSmithKline and its laboratories in the US, UK and Spain; engagement with the Structural Genomics Consortium, which involves the University of Oxford and the University of Toronto; and the so-called BRANETEC programme, which involves ACA’s Dutch member, Nuffic, and encourages the formation of institutional partnerships focused on undergraduate student exchange between Brazil and the Netherlands. Results of these calls will be made public throughout 2012, but Brazil’s STEM students are clearly (about to be) on the move.

Science Without Borders (in Portuguese)