USP pro-rectors debut column on innovation – 07/13/2023 – Market

Two pro-rectors of USP (University of São Paulo) start to publish a monthly column in Sheet on innovation this Thursday (13).

Entitled “Innovation Paths”, the column will be signed by Paulo Nussenzveig, USP’s Dean of Research and Innovation, and Raúl González Lima, USP’s Associate Dean of Innovation. The texts will be published on Thursdays on the Sheet.

Nussenzveig holds a PhD in quantum physics from the Paris IV University and has been a physics professor at USP since 1996. At the university, he created a quantum optics laboratory. He has already been an associate editor for the Brazilian Journal of Physics and a columnist for USP radio. He has been in the position of pro-rector since 2022.

Lima is a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Poli and a specialist in biomedical engineering. In 2020, she coordinated a project that developed and made available an emergency lung ventilator, which helped Covid patients. She also assumed a pro-rectorship in 2022.

In 2022, Nussenzveig and Lima traveled to Canada and were blown away by what they saw in the province of Ontario, which includes Toronto. The region has created a robust innovation hub, in a project that has lasted 20 years and has brought together government, universities, companies, entrepreneurs and venture capital investors.

“We returned obsessed, because Ontario has a smaller population than the city of São Paulo”, says the physicist. “We are in a world innovation race, but the feeling is that we are not running. We are hardly looking”.

Written in four hands by the two professors, the columns will seek to talk about cases that can serve as inspiration for Brazil to advance in the area.

“We want to spread this agenda [de inovação]showing examples of other places that we can follow, adapt and improve”, says Nussenzveig.

For him, the country has three areas with great potential for investment: biodiversity, which can generate new medicines, food agriculture and the fight against tropical diseases.

“Entering to compete in areas where we are extremely late is not a very good idea, because it will be very difficult to catch up. We have to look at the areas that are being born and where we have very great competitive advantages”, he defends.