CE recruits scientists to seek solutions in the public sector – 02/08/2024 – Science

Scientists from different areas of knowledge, such as education and engineering, are leading projects in departments and other bodies in Ceará to work on state challenges, ranging from improving student performance in high school to combating the effects of drought on the population.

In the program, called Chief Scientist, researchers use academic knowledge with the aim of contributing to practical solutions to public demands. Today, 20 professors, all linked to universities in Ceará, work in 20 state bodies, from the secretariats to the Court of Auditors.

“We need to identify the problem that, with the help of scientists, can be solved or at least transformed. The purpose is to make concrete deliveries that help solve challenges facing the demanding bodies”, says Jorge Soares, director of innovation at Funcap (Fundação Cearense de Support for Scientific and Technological Development), the institution that manages the program.

According to Soares, researchers receive a grant of R$8,000 and investment in the projects is around R$1 million.

The Chief Scientist was started in 2018, when a computing team from UFC (Federal University of Ceará), led by a professor from the institution, developed technology tools for the Public Security Secretariat. They sought to modernize the department by structuring databases and creating various tools.

One of the solutions was a map of the state that offered information about the places with the highest number of crimes. They also developed an application that updates police officers on the incidence of crimes and allows them to identify people through facial recognition.

After this first initiative, the program was expanded to other state bodies. Each secretariat can have more than one project, prepared based on a demand from the sector in conjunction with the secretariat’s technical team and researchers.

Professors are selected by Funcap based on affinity with the area and indicators linked to scientific production, such as student guidance and scholarships received by CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).

“There is no notice, because only groups that know how to write well would win and the proposal would be separated from the secretariat. That’s what we don’t want. We need the researcher creating the project together with the State”, says Soares, from Funcap, who He is also an engineering professor at UFC.

One of those selected was Jorge Lira, a mathematics professor at the same university, who is now chief scientist at the Department of Education. He helped build a program to improve learning for high school students.

The researchers, with the department’s technical team, made a general assessment based on the state’s educational data to understand student performance in mathematics.

“We noticed that students entered the 1st grade with huge gaps in basic knowledge, something that was not explored. We carefully observed the failures of these students and, based on that, we made decisions”, he states.

The team created a new curriculum, which provides a review of content from previous years for high school students, with the aim of facilitating the transition from one stage to another. Furthermore, they implemented four assessments per year to check whether the method has worked with the students.

The project also generated a training program for mathematics teachers. They are taught, for example, how to better observe student errors and when they should intervene to improve learning.

Another result, this one from the Secretariat of Water Resources, was the State Policy for Proactive Drought Management, launched in December 2022. The team created an action plan with attributions for different state bodies, aiming to reduce the impact of droughts in more vulnerable areas. vulnerable.

In the environment, a project aimed at conserving Ceará’s fauna identifies threatened species, prepares coastal and marine planning and carries out different research to maintain Ceará’s species. One of them, by scientists from UECE (State University of Ceará), intends to create clones of red brocket deer to prevent the animal’s extinction.

According to Jorge Soares, from Funcap, other states, such as Tocantins and Pernambuco, are seeking to adopt the model inspired by Ceará.

Antonio Oliveira, administration professor at UFRN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte), states that initiatives like this already exist in other countries. Furthermore, there are chairs at universities throughout Brazil, when there is collaboration between academia and public management.

The Chief Scientist program, however, brings an innovation by expanding the presence of researchers to different departments, in addition to bringing a specific person responsible for each area of ​​management, according to Oliveira.

He says that bringing professors from higher education institutions is an advantage as it gives public administration greater control over how to solve that challenge, especially in relation to research methodologies.