A new public notice from the Serrapilheira Institute will select ten young scientists from all over Brazil to present proposals in the areas of natural sciences, computer science and mathematics. In the sixth public call to support science, the institute offers R$ 9.1 million for the chosen projects.
The financial support that young scientists will receive varies from R$200,000 to R$700,000 over five years. At registrations will open on October 28, so that candidates can prepare and submit a pre-project to the public notice. The deadline for registration is the 28th of November.
The director of Science at the Serrapilheira Institute, Cristina Caldas, clarified, in an interview with Brazil Agency, that the distribution of resources will take into account that the experimental areas demand more resources than the theoretical areas. “The scientist will send a budget request and we already receive differentiated budgets in relation to the demand of specific areas. In general, we comply with what the scientist asks and there is this relationship that the experimental areas are even more demanding”, explained Cristina.
There is also the possibility for those selected to access extra resources that correspond to up to 30% of the grant and that will be invested in the training and integration of people from groups underrepresented in science, including women, blacks and indigenous people, among others.
Selection
The selection takes place in two phases and takes into account the excellence of the proposals in the different areas. In the first phase, candidates submit a pre-proposal, which will be evaluated by international reviewers. “What defines those selected is the quality of the proposals and the indication of international reviewers. We choose candidates based on this list that is recommended by international reviewers, based on those who are most competitive”. Those appointed by the commission must present their complete projects. The final step includes an English interview with the candidates.
Young scientists must have a permanent link with a research institution in Brazil and have completed their doctorate between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2020. The term is extended by up to two years for female researchers with children.
The 6th public call introduces novelties in relation to previous years. One of them is that the candidate must detail the risk of his project based on three definitions proposed by Serrapilheira: the design risk, related to the formulation of the project hypothesis; the risk of approach, which concerns the methodological choice; and the technical risk linked to obtaining the data. “It’s something we want to explore together with the scientific community. It becomes a new roadmap for candidates to submit proposals.”
Cristina Caldas indicated that, for Serrapilheira, the risk is welcome and is part of bold projects. The purpose of detailing is to measure how scientists’ choices could go wrong and what the researcher intends to do if they do.
partnerships
Another novelty brought by the public notice is the establishment of partnerships between the Serrapilheira Institute with the National Council of State Research Support Foundations (Confap) and with the Research Support Foundations (FAPs) of São Paulo (Fapesp), Rio de Janeiro (Faperj). ) and Santa Catarina (Fapesc). The objective is to expand support for young scientists in the states.
Cristina Caldas stated that Serrapilheira already had a defined space as a private funder for young scientists. “But we saw that it was important to start making effective partnerships with other development agents as well”. It is the first time that in a public notice there is a partnership with support foundations and Confap. “We see this possibility as a maximization of our efforts because, after selecting the scientists, we end up not being able to support everyone we would like to support due to a budget constraint.”
According to the Science director, the partnership has two main reasons. “The first is that we manage to make more money available to young people, who have more difficulty accessing resources at this stage of their careers and are trying to set up independent lines of research, competing with researchers seniors. The second is because it will be a good experiment in effective public-private partnerships (PPPs).
The director believes that this will be an interesting experiment because it means combining the agility and accessibility of private funding “with the robustness that we expect from public funding”.
The idea is, in the next public notices, to continue the partnerships with research support foundations throughout Brazil. “It is starting now with a restricted number of FAPs, but we want to expand this in the next calls, that other FAPs officially join us and that we can explore other ways of working together”. He also stressed that this is a pilot experiment, but that it has possibilities of expansion, also considering other guidelines, such as open science and diversity in science.
deadlines
The complete proposals have a final submission deadline on April 17, 2023, at 3:00 pm, and the selected names are expected to be announced on June 28, with support starting on July 28 of the next year.