UFV representatives were in Germany in April, with the aim of opening up new partnership possibilities for mobility, postgraduate studies and research, as well as strengthening existing relationships with some institutions in that country. The effort was based on the needs of the University’s Capes-Print Internationalization Program. However, an attempt was also made to prospect opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate programs not covered by Print, and interaction with technology and innovation centers associated with the institutions visited.

Ten professors were part of the entourage, among them the Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, Raul Narciso Guedes; the director of International Relations, Vladimir Di Iorio, and the special advisor to the Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, Emerson Medeiros Del Ponte. Also part of the trip were professors from postgraduate programs in Agricultural Microbiology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology; Plant Physiology; Phytopathology; Entomology; Soils and Plant Nutrition and Animal Science.

The visits, which lasted about 10 days, took place in six German universities, starting with Münster. There, as in other institutions, UFV representatives participated in meetings with directors and researchers. In many places, they were divided, according to areas of interest, for visits to specific groups and nuclei, aiming, among other objectives, at the exchange of graduate students and professors.

At the University of Würzburg, for example, professor Eugênio Eduardo de Oliveira, from the Department of Entomology at the UFV, met with the director of the Department of Animal Physiology, Ansgar Büschges, for the first contacts related to the construction of a joint lecture series. They will be joint events involving the UFV (and possible partners) and the universities of Würzburg and Cologne to offer their students knowledge of neurobiology and evolution.

Also visited were the universities of Hohenheim, Göttingen, and Düsseldorf, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Applied Sciences of Weihenstephan-Triesdorf (HSWT), with representation from the Bavarian University Center for Latin America, based in Erlanger.

In addition to prospecting for opportunities and visiting the institutions’ structures, the dean of research and graduate studies and the director of International Relations also discussed the possibility of raising funds for projects. Both assess the trip as very productive and with perspectives, both in terms of support in Germany for academic mobility and sources of funds for this, as well as the integration of double-degree efforts. According to the pro-rector, “possibilities of financial support are available in Germany and there is interest in its expansion with pairing with Fapemig, as indicated by BayLat”.

According to Professor Raul, the visit exceeded expectations. “The fact that some UFV professors, such as Adriano Nunes Nesi, Eugênio Oliveira and Emerson Del Ponte, were already familiar with the German system and that there were existing partnerships, facilitated interactions”. They also had the support of the Brazilian Center of the University of Münster, of the representatives of this institution and of the TUM, crowded in the German Center of Science and Innovation (DWIH), in São Paulo; from the nucleus of the AcroAlliance project, in Hohenheim, directed by Professor Thomas Hilger, and from the central office of BayLat, in Erlanger. At BayLat, the entourage was informed about the availability of a public notice for Brazilian undergraduate and master’s students, in a call for Latin America, of a scholarship to stay between three and five months in a higher education institution in Bavaria.

According to the dean of Research and Graduate Studies, the mission was made possible by resources from the Capes-Print program, with a counterpart from PPG, like the missions carried out to Spain and Italy, completed last year. The mobility and training notices launched by DRI and PPG in 2023 are the result of these efforts, as well as the arrival and stay at the UFV of three doctoral candidates from the University of Catania (Sicily, Italy), as part of the double degree between the two institutions.

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