campus news
By JAY REY
Published January 22, 2025
UB is embarking on a new partnership that will grow its collaboration with researchers from Brazil.
The new agreement with Brazil’s Ministry of Education will bring Brazilian faculty and PhD students to UB to collaborate on research for up to a year.
President Satish K. Tripathi recently formalized the agreement with Brazil’s Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education. CAPES, as it is known, is an agency of Brazil’s Ministry of Education designed to improve the quality of higher-ed faculty and graduate students in Brazil through grant programs.
In this case, the agency will administer a competitive selection process and sponsor the research visits to UB.
“Our partnership with CAPES is a great opportunity to build extensive and impactful research collaborations with faculty and PhD student colleagues from Brazil,” says Nojin Kwak, vice provost for international education.
“Our office looks forward to working with CAPES and our academic units at UB to implement this far-reaching program and expand our scientific and scholarly ties to Brazilian universities,” Kwak says.
UB each year would host up to 10 PhD students and 20 faculty members from Brazil, typically for a semester but as long as an academic year, says John J. Wood, senior associate vice provost for international education.
The agreement also opens the door for up to 10 UB faculty members a year to travel to Brazil to collaborate on research.
Brazil has a robust higher-education sector, conducting significant scientific research that aligns well with UB’s, Wood says.
A 2026 start to the collaboration is anticipated.
While a variety of schools at UB have collaborated with universities in Brazil, the School of Dental Medicine has leveraged relationships in that country both in the past and under the leadership of Dean Marcelo Araujo.
“UB SDM has a long history of research collaboration with universities in Brazil,” Araujo says. “This agreement will allow our university to expand this partnership and strengthen the scientific ties between the two countries.”