(08.04.19) Three months after new presidents took office at DFG partner organisations CAPES and CNPq, representatives of the DFG attended meetings on 14 and 15 March in Brasília. During these meetings, the continuation of existing partnerships was endorsed and new initiatives were discussed.

The new president of CAPES, Prof. Dr. Anderson Ribeiro Correia, showed great interest in the German research landscape and in stepping up the organisation’s cooperation with the DFG, which began in 1995 and was renewed in 2007 and 2018 through extensions of the partnership agreement. Correia’s own field is aeronautical engineering, and among other roles he has served as Rector of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, or ITA (Technological Institute of Aeronautics). At ITA, he also served as Vice-Rector of International Relations, helping to coordinate initiatives with Germany.

There was also an opportunity to discuss the details of current joint initiatives with the head of international affairs at CAPES, Prof. Dr. Concepta Pimentel. Now that the deadlines for submitting proposals for German-Brazilian projects in law, chemistry and engineering have expired, the two funding organisations are in the process of reviewing these proposals. Time was also devoted to discussing possible future projects, such as the bilateral funding of International Research Training Groups.

This was followed by a meeting with representatives of partner organisation CNPq. Together with the coordinators of the Department of International Cooperation, Prof. Dr. Lelio Fellows Filho and Lucilene Barros Velo, the DFG representatives discussed ways of extending the agreement signed in 2007 and possible approaches to resuming the collaboration.

In January, Prof. Dr. João Luiz Filgueiras de Azevedo took over the presidency of the funding organisation, which has had to cope with significant budget cuts in recent years. “A number of changes are in the pipeline at CNPq and we hope these will have a positive impact. Building on this, we are keen to resume the currently inactive partnership with the DFG, which has been very successful in the past,” says Fellows.

At the end of April, DFG President Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider will attend the annual meeting of the Global Research Council in São Paulo and will use this opportunity to meet with the presidents of CNPq and CAPES to continue the dialogue on future joint initiatives.

In addition to the discussions in Brasília, the DFG representatives also met with FAPEMIG, the DFG partner organisation in the state of Minas Gerais based in Belo Horizonte. Scientific director Prof. Dr. Paulo Beirão and the head of the Department of International Cooperation, Marina Diniz Brini, received the visitors from the DFG and discussed current calls for proposals and possibilities for future cooperation.