[RETROSPECTIVE] New stakes for the academic site and the Lyon health ecosystem with Brazil

Visit from a delegation of the University of São Paulo (USP) on March 28, 2023

The visit was led by the Dean of the USP, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti, who was accompanied by Paulo Nussenzveig, Vice-president of Research and Innovation; Sergio Proença, Director of the USP Office of National and International Academic Cooperation; Fernando Menezes, Administrative Director of FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and Professor of Law at USP; Nadège Mézié, Attaché for Science and Technology at the Consulate General of France in São Paulo; and Helena Melchionna, Attaché for Science at the Embassy of Brazil in Paris.

The purpose of this visit was twofold, on the one hand, the creation of an Institut Pasteur and an International Research Center (CNRS), supported by FAPESP on the campus of the University of São Paulo, and the renewal of an agreement with Inserm.

On the other hand, the USP aims to increase its incoming and outgoing mobility with France (150 courses per semester in English), to set up joint research projects and to create joint international laboratories as well as a center for research in oncology. The FAPESP supports all these initiatives.

The Lyon delegation, for its part, included representatives from the universities Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Lumière Lyon 2, Jean Moulin Lyon 3, ENS Lyon, Centrale Lyon, INSA Lyon and VetAgro Sup as well as the Université de Lyon. Discussions between the heads of the various institutions addressed the issues involved in cooperation with Brazil in terms of training-research-innovation, and shared themes, such as human and animal health (One Health, Shape-Med), engineering, agronomy and food safety, human and social sciences, exact sciences, etc.

USP Official website(BR) | Program of the day (FR)

Visit of a delegation from the FAPESP and the Butantan Institute on April 3, 2023

Following an initial visit from the Butantan Institute in October 2022 and discussions in the field of cancer research, this second visit allowed Esper Kallas, the Director of the Butantan Institute, Raul Machado, Director of Institutional Strategy and advisor to the FAPESP, and Marco Zago, President of the FAPESP, to get a feel for Lyon’s health ecosystem and to identify new avenues for cooperation between public and private research.

With the aim of promoting and highlighting the academic and scientific ecosystem in health, a full program of encounters was coordinated by Jérôme Honnorat, Vice-president of health research at the UCBL and Séverine Dalynjak, Head of the UdL’s International Attractiveness and Promotion Department. The mobilization of key players enabled high-level scientific discussions on the structuring of a health hub, around the Shape-Med project, the joint research units brought together within the UCBL Biosciences UFR (training and research unit) and the training offered (including Master Live - Erasmus Mundus Joint Master). Research results and ongoing projects were addressed in the fields of neuroscience, oncology with the Lyon Cancer Research Center (CRCL), infectiology (immunology, virology) with the International Center for Infectious Diseases Research (CIRI), and stem cell biology with the Stem Cell and Brain Institute (SBRI).

A visit of the Hospital Group East Lyon, the CERMEP (a pre-clinical and clinical in vivo imaging platform open to practitioners and researchers from the academic and industrial world), the Institute of Cognitive Sciences (ISC) and the Lyon Neurosciences Research Center (CNRL) made it possible to complete an overall understanding of the health landscape. In order to capitalize on the discussions held, a series of cross-scientific workshops will be launched to allow French and Paulista researchers and research-professors to identify common themes of interest and to conduct joint research.

Butantan Institute official website(BR) | FAPESP official website(EN) | Program of the day (FR)