Sao Paulo

A fresh focus for Brazilian science is likely to emerge from a summit to be held on 18–21 September in Brasilia.

Organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Conference of Science, Technology and Innovation will attempt to determine Brazil's science and technology policy for the next 10 years.

Brazil's green paper suggests new policy angles.

According to a 250-page green paper written to help guide the meeting, policy should move on from the traditional focus of research investment to tackle two areas of perceived weakness: general levels of public education and industrial innovation.

“The great success of the 'Asian tigers' came largely from the role that families give to the education of their children,” says physicist Cylon Gonçalves da Silva, former director of Brazil's national synchrotron at Campinas, near São Paulo. But the level of schooling for the average Brazilian has grown only slowly — from four years to six — since 1981, he points out.

Da Silva coordinated the 400 scientists involved in writing the green paper and helped to plan the conference's programme. The summit will involve representatives of scientific societies, industry and agriculture — the first such meeting since 1985. In the intervening years, Brazil has invested heavily in training PhDs and research, and has sharply increased its share of publications in leading international journals.

But a government freeze on university hiring means that the country is struggling to employ its new graduates. Writing in Nature (413, 16; 2001), for example, four Brazilian researchers warn that “a whole generation of young PhDs will be lost to research”.

“The idea of the conference is a very good one,” says Glaci Zancan, a biochemist at the Federal University of Paraná and president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science. He says that it should focus on how science can help to address inequity in Brazilian society.

The meeting will help to produce a white paper on policy. But Brazil will elect a new president next year, and some fear that the new administration may ignore the paper, unless the meeting reaches a strong consensus on what it should say.