Doctoral student in Scientific and Technological Policy (PCT) Victo José da Silva Neto was one of 40 Brazilian students selected from undergraduate and postgraduate students from various universities in the country to participate in an online meeting promoted by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and the Nobel Prize Outreach, communications arm of Nobel Foundation. The event, which will take place on April 8 to discuss “The Value of Science”, aims to generate a debate about the importance of science for society and policies public projects based on scientific knowledge, especially in times of crisis, in addition to inspiring Brazilian students to pursue scientific careers.
In the first moment of the meeting, there will be a dialogue between May-Britt Moser, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2014, and Serge Haroche, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2012, who will be accompanied by Luiz Davidovich, president of ABC, and Helena Nader, co-president of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences and vice-president of ABC. The conversation will be led by Adam Smith, scientific director of Nobel Prize Outreach.
In the second part of the event, two round tables will bring together Nobel Prize winners Moser and Haroche, with selected students for question and answer sessions. Victo, who is guided by the professor at the Institute of Geosciences, Maria Beatriz Bonacelli, will participate in the round table with Serge Haroche and will have the opportunity to ask the physicist questions. The students were selected from among 167 nominees from 88 public and private universities in 23 states across the country.
The activity is a preliminary event to the Nobel Brazil Dialogue 2022, which will bring together winners of the Nobel Prize winner and other intellectual leaders to discuss “The Future We Want”. This meeting format will be unprecedented and was suggested by ABC to the Nobel Foundation to bring together Nobel laureates with researchers from all over Brazil. The event took place in other countries, bringing together only students from certain Universities. In addition to the collaboration of the Serrapilheira Institute, which finances the event, the Ministry of Education sent a letter to Brazilian federal universities recommending that the broadcast of the meeting integrate undergraduate and postgraduate activities.
Victo, who has a degree in International Relations from PUC SP and in Economics from Unicamp, with a master's degree in Scientific and Technological Policy from PPG-PCT, in his doctorate he investigates the interactions between science and technology in the digital era, following the tradition of economic history of science and technology. It addresses issues such as the influence of artificial intelligence on scientific practices, the central role of data and the development of public digital platforms. His advisor, Maria Beatriz Bonacelli, commented on the satisfaction of a student from the PCT Postgraduate Program representing Unicamp in such a unique event. “It portrays one of the central themes of the debates of both the Department and the Postgraduate Program in PCT, which is the relationship between Science, Technology and Society – how these interactions have occurred throughout History and how they are shaken now with the advent of Artificial Intelligence and the platformization of the economy, posing challenges for the Science agenda, for the training of researchers and professionals in general, for public policies”, he said.
The meeting, which will be conducted in English, will be broadcast between 10am and 13:30pm on YouTube. Nobel prize with simultaneous translation available at Local Guide. Signups to receive updates and reminders can be made here.
