The rector of the University of Guyana, Laurent Linguet, visited USP on Wednesday, October 23. Located in French Guiana, the institution has sought to expand academic ties and collaborative work with Brazil.
“Since last year we’ve been carrying out some visits to get closer to USP and other strategic Brazilian partners to establish relationships and identify areas of research convergence,” explained Linguet. “Some of our most impactful areas of activity are related to issues of biodiversity and the Amazon, both of which are very relevant to the research that USP carries out. We know the importance that the University’s management attaches to its internationalization mission and we are very committed to making this partnership an important axis of scientific collaboration between France and Brazil,” he said.
The rector of USP, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior, commented that these relations are in a development phase: “We have developed excellent joint projects with French entities, including the establishment here at USP of major French laboratories, such as the Institut Pasteur and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, in the French acronym). Now we have an opportunity, which should be a priority for us, to work with a university located in a neighboring territory, with whom we share the Amazon region. We are the second Brazilian university that publishes the most research related to the Amazon, after the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), which is also our partner, and we have very important studies and collections at the Museum of Zoology (MZ) and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE),” he recalled.
As a more immediate result of the meeting, the University of Guyana will appoint professors from its faculty to teach courses open to the entire community as early as 2025.
The meeting was also attended by the attaché for Science and Technology of the Consulate General of France in São Paulo, Marion Magnan; the president of the USP Agency of National and International Cooperation (Aucani), Sérgio Proença; the administrative director of the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp), Fernando Menezes, who is also a professor at USP’s Faculty of Law (FD); and Fapesp’s program manager, Nadege Mezie.
