German-Brazilian Year of Science 2010/2011

A strong partnership in science and research has linked Germany and Brazil for more than 40 years. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and its Brazilian partner ministry launched the German-Brazilian Year of Science, Technology and Innovation 2010/11 in order to celebrate this successful collaboration and to add new impulses.

Logo German-Brazilian Year

Numerous science, research and education events took place in Germany and Brazil between April 2010 and April 2011. The joint theme of the year was “sustainable:innovative”; this encouraged Brazilian and German universities, research institutions, scientists and students to exchange ideas on the cross-sectional topics of sustainability and innovation and to trigger new bilateral projects. The aim of the events was to foster greater awareness of the variety and excellence of bilateral science cooperation and to add new impulses to the scientific and technological collaboration.

More than 100 German-Brazilian events took place during the joint Year of Science, including 60 best-practice projects, which were funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) at more than one million Euros in total. Highlights included the Brazil Week at the Westphalian Wilhelms-University in Münster, a roadshow in Brazil, where Germany was presented as a location for research, the travelling exhibition “Auge des Himmels (Eye of Heaven)” by the German Centre for Aviation and Space Travel (DLR) and a promotional tour through Brazil, which advertised studying in Germany.

The German-Brazilian Year triggered the set-up of an agricultural research laboratory at the Brazilian research facility EMBRAPA under the auspices of the Helmholtz Research Centre in Jülich. Since 2012, the two institutions have increasingly collaborated in the field of plant breeding. The workshop on “Value creation from bio-resources” in the context of the year was the starting point for a more intense research collaboration.