The new challenges for research in Brazil

The legacy of the pandemic and the challenges of mission-oriented research were discussed by heads of funding agencies, research institutions and universities at a seminar co-hosted by FAPESP and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London, delivered an online keynote presentation.

By Claudia Izique and Elton Alisson  |  Agência FAPESP – FAPESP and Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) recently assembled heads of research funding agencies, research institutions and universities to discuss mission-oriented research, an increasingly important topic on research funding agendas worldwide. 

On the eve of its 60th anniversary, FAPESP is putting the finishing touches to a new strategic plan, and support for mission-oriented research could be included as a funding line. The proposal is due to be discussed by the Board of Trustees, FAPESP’s governing body. “Implementing this strategy is a fresh challenge. It entails inquiring into global and local trends, and consulting with society, business leaders and all tiers of government. It will be key to hear what the public sector and private enterprise have to say, and to re-assess flows of analysis and proposals. A different stance will be required. The entire institution will have to assume this new stance if this different way of funding research is to succeed,” said Marco Antonio Zago, President of FAPESP. 

The necessary changes include selecting research topics and methods of presenting research proposals. “FAPESP is and will remain involved in this,” Zago said. “We have to assure prevention of the epidemics that will keep coming and will do so regularly. FAPESP and other institutions will have to allocate funding to improve vaccines, support the transition to a low-carbon economy, and stimulate the development of educational assessment methodologies, among other initiatives.”

“Missions don’t prioritize applied research over basic research. They’re a new way of framing the dialogue between applied and basic research, of galvanizing new forms of collaboration,” said Carlos Américo Pacheco, CEO of FAPESP.

Although research and new knowledge are important components of missions, and connect them with funding agencies, missions are broad (“sometimes too broad,” Pacheco said) and cannot be achieved without development, proof of concept, and other measures such as strong engagement by the public sector, specific regulation, and new forms of governance. “Indeed, they involve a wide array of actors,” he stressed.

The principle of mission-oriented research already informs some of FAPESP’s initiatives, such as the two calls for proposals to establish Science for Development Centers, a call for the Basic Education Research Program (PROEDUCA), partnerships with state governments, and the Amazon+10 Fund, which involves São Paulo and nine states in Amazonia. “We’re making the concept of mission-oriented projects a reality. The most important task is bringing together science and solutions to the problems of society, of real life,” said Patricia Ellen, São Paulo State Secretary for Economic Development. 

A new social contract between partners

The seminar co-hosted by FAPESP and CNPq was entitled “The impact of science on society and the advancement of knowledge: the new challenges of mission-oriented research”. Its purpose was precisely to widen the discussion and glean contributions to the formulation of this new research funding policy.

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom, and one of the formulators of the concept of mission-oriented thinking, opened the seminar with an online presentation. “The economic problems many countries are facing and still trying to get over, the downturn caused by the pandemic, are occurring at the same time as another really urgent problem, which is the climate crisis,” she said.

In her view, these problems, which require urgent solutions, can be an opportunity for countries to pursue new forms of investment, implement changes in public administration, and establish a new social contract between actors, sharing risks and rewards. “We need to switch from a political project that’s very reactive to crises, to a more proactive, mission-oriented approach to dealing with environmental, health and other problems,” she said.

Mazzucato referred to the example of the Apollo program led by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. She noted that NASA began by redesigning the procurement system and setting up a new working relationship with the private sector. “They knew they had to work not just with companies in the aerospace industry but also in nutrition, data, computing, software, electronics and so on,” she said.

The project was seen as collective value creation, as collective risk sharing, but care was taken to ensure that the contracts entered into the private sector would call for fair returns with no excess profits, rewards for innovation, and improvements to the quality of products, processes and services. “But they knew that NASA, the state itself, had to make the early-stage investments that were higher-risk and more capital-intensive,” she said.

Besides fulfilling the mission of landing on the Moon and returning home in a specified period, the Apollo program created huge economic value and commercialization opportunities on Earth, involving camera phones, foil blankets, baby formula, software, and many other products. “This dynamic spillover across many sectors was possible thanks to all the homework problems that were solved along the way,” she said.

“You begin with challenges, such as the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs, adopted by the United Nations in Agenda 2030], and transform them into concrete missions,” she said. “We need a new way of thinking about the capacity and capabilities of our public organizations.”

When Mazzucato finished, CNPq President Evaldo Vilela commented on her presentation. “Mariana highlighted our responsibility to work with business and society,” he said. “We can’t do very much without the state. At CNPq, we’re implementing a modernization plan to make sure we can leverage the profound transformations that are happening in a world with so many demands for more. We’re embracing the idea of mission-oriented research because it's capable of shifting the frontier of knowledge.” 

New challenges: urgency and scale

The new challenges faced by research, alongside Mazzucato’s recommendations, informed the discussion that followed her presentation. “A relevant question is how funders can go beyond what they traditionally do,” Pacheco said during a round-table session on the challenges of mission-oriented research in Brazil, moderated by Jerson Lima Silva, President of the Rio de Janeiro “Carlos Chagas Filho” Research Foundation (FAPERJ).

“We know how to fund the type of research known as investigator initiative studies, and we do that well, but we don’t go farther. Complex projects are more difficult. FAPESP and CNPq have experience in funding this type of research, but projects that combine investigator initiative research and institutional proposals aren’t common. Projects that go beyond research to enter the terrain of development as production and proof of concept are also infrequent,” Pacheco said, citing examples such as challenges in the areas of basic education, sustainability, climate change, and topics relating to the Amazon.

“I believe one of the toughest challenges of mission-oriented research for Brazil is precisely making the Amazon a priority,” said Márcia Perales, President of the Amazonas Research Foundation (FAPEAM). “We need science, funding, human resources, productive interactive flows, universities, and technology institutes,” she added, listing resources that currently “fall short of what’s needed”.

For Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, Chair of the National Council of Education (CNE), Brazil began the twenty-first century without achieving the twentieth-century agenda. “Ever since the 1988 Constitution we’ve been trying to organize and surmount the problems of 47 million children in basic education – 85% in public schools – and 2.2 million teachers,” she said. “An important step was the PROEDUCA call issued by FAPESP jointly with the São Paulo State Department of Education since most of the research is done by the third sector and not by universities.”

Mission-oriented research “is about more than just research”, according to Pedro Passos, co-founder of cosmetics company Natura and a member of FAPESP’s Board of Trustees. “To solve our country’s problems, we need to reorganize its institutions with a sense of urgency and on a large scale,” he said. In the case of the transition to a low-carbon economy, Brazil has comparative advantages. “We’re starting from a more advanced stage in terms of clean energy,” he said, while warning that the regulatory framework must be put in place quickly and that market solutions will be needed to align Brazil with what is already happening in other countries so as to ensure it is competitive internationally. “We need a lot of research to find innovative solutions faster. This is an opportunity Brazil can’t afford to miss.”

Brazil in the post-pandemic era

Clear goals and metrics must be established to evaluate the economic and social impact of mission-oriented research, especially at a time when Brazil is striving to recover from the effects of the pandemic. This was the focus for a round-table session on the impact of science in the post-pandemic era moderated by Luiz Davidovich, President of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC).

For Davidovich, the pandemic magnified the nation’s problems, “especially inequality”, and spurred critical thinking among many people. “We need to design a system involving basic science and its applications. We also need to choose investment priorities,” he said, suggesting three: the Amazon, renewable energy, and basic education. “It’s important to think about science diffusion, which shouldn’t be based only on utility but should also motivate young people to follow a career in science.”

For Fernanda De Negri, a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economics (IPEA), in a country where human and financial resources for research are scarce, choices must be made “with care and transparency”. High-impact science is science that has an effect on people’s lives, becomes a benchmark for scientists, and fuels the development of new technologies. It therefore requires innovation and links with the business sector. “But high-impact science can’t be done without large-scale research labs, and outside the universities, we have few of those in Brazil,” she said, citing the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), where the particle accelerator Sirius is installed, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA).

Maurício Lopes, a senior researcher at EMBRAPA and a former president of the organization, said Brazil urgently needs to invest in strategic intelligence and alternative futures modeling. He cited the fertilizer crisis as an example. “We’ve known we ought to stop being dependent on imports for 40 years, but we’ve relied on economic logic since we have suppliers who sell to us at the basic price. Until the next crisis comes along,” he said.

The lack of a strategic vision also impaired Brazil’s response to the pandemic. “The problem is still with us. We knew about the risk of a pandemic. We have a list of viruses ready to cause epidemics. Brazil has data and a health system, and we shouldn’t be so reliant on preventive measures taken elsewhere,” said Manoel Barral Netto, a researcher at Fiocruz.

For Marcos Lisboa, CEO of INSPER, Brazil should use methodologies and techniques that have been tested in other countries to orient public policies. “We discuss education without discussing science, for example. Chile invests a great deal of time in public policy management, whereas we don’t study technical details, don’t analyze the empirical evidence, don’t do impact assessments, and don’t even take control groups into account,” he said.

A complete recording of the seminar can be watched on Agência FAPESP’s YouTube channel.