Two researchers from Unicamp, José Ricardo Teixeira Junior, from the Biology Institute (IB), and Geovane Augusto Gaia Vieira, from the Geosciences Institute (IG), were selected to join in 2023 the select group of Brazilians in the Fulbright Program, one of the most prestigious and sought after in the world. Considered in the doctorate-sandwich modality, both emphasize, however, that they await the resolution of bureaucratic issues by the Foundation and the United States government before proceeding, in the second half of the year, to the North American universities of Yale and UCLA ( University of California at Los Angeles - Davis campus), respectively.
What it means to be a “fulbrighter”
Historically recognized for its excellence, the Fulbright scholarship has, among its former scholars (known as “Fulbrighters”), 60 Nobel Prize winners, 39 heads of state and 88 Pulitzer Prize winners. “When you are a Fulbright Scholar once, you become a fulbrighter, as they call it, forever. According to what I researched, it's like joining a team”, says Geovane, who hopes to be able to expand his network of contacts with researchers from the most diverse areas. The possibility of working in collaboration with a team of cutting-edge researchers is, for doctoral student José Ricardo, one of the main differences of the Fulbright exchange.
One of the program's priorities is to encourage researchers engaged in transforming the world and the community where they live — a concern evident in the two projects by Unicamp students awarded this year. PhD candidate in Genetics and Molecular Biology at IB, José Ricardo proposes, in his research, an iconoclastic approach to the treatment of childhood cancer with the highest incidence in Brazil, acute lymphocytic leukemia, based on the observation of signs repeatedly pointed out in the literature, although not investigated. “My project is based on a new hypothesis, which emerged after a discussion with my advisor: what if, instead of cutting the information that 'addicts' the cancer cell to proliferating all the time, we increased this signal even more, inducing cell death due to exhaustion or hindering its proliferation to the point of making it more susceptible to certain treatments?”, explains the student, whose advisor is Doctor José Andrés Yunes, at the Boldrini Children's Center.
Geovane's project, entitled “Reconstruction of paleo-CO2 and paleotemperature of the Devonian of the Paraná Basin from phytofossiliferous records”, will enable the investigation of material practically unknown to researchers in the area, contributing with new data for studies related to climate change. Although the line of research is already well developed in countries in the Northern Hemisphere, all the work has been developed, so far, with material collected in that region. “All the data they have, on paleoclimatology, which is the central theme of my project, comes from there. Temperature data, greenhouse gas rates in the atmosphere in the Devonian period, between 360 and 400 million years ago. We believe that the material I will bring, specific to our region, will have a great impact on UCLA”, says the IG doctoral student.
From the Institute of Geosciences to UCLA
The area that Geovane researches, in the Devonian, was between 30º and 60º south latitude, closer to where Antarctica is located today. “By providing data on this range, we will be able to have materials that will allow us to understand how these possible variations in paleoclimate during the Devonian affected the diversity, ecosystem and dynamics of life that were distributed at this latitude”, he adds.
Geovane's advisor at Unicamp, Fresia Soledad Ricardi Torres Branco, associate professor at IG, highlights the innovative nature of the project. “Their samples are some of the oldest from the Gondwana continent, where Brazil was located. They are the oldest plants that inhabited the Earth, which spent part of their lives outside the water. Not everyone has that,” she explains. For the Unicamp professor, the possibility of working with such rare materials, collected in the municipality of Jaguariaíva (PR), will be a challenge for the UCLA researchers, led by Dr. Isabel Montañez. A pioneer in the study of fossil CO2 calculations based on plant fossils and the main reference in the area, the UCLA researcher will now guide the Geovane project, on the Davis campus.
With the experience gained during research in the UCLA laboratory, Fresia believes that Geovane can introduce a new line of research in Brazil in the future and reinforce existing ones. “The devices are very modern and calibrated. Geovane will learn how to analyze geological deep time. There are few laboratories focused on this.”
Brazilian and North American innovation
Like Geovane, José Ricardo chose the researcher with whom he would like to work on his exchange, not the university. “I already intended to collaborate with Professor Markus Müschen, director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, at Yale, because we imagined that he was developing research very similar to ours and, as I talked to him, it became clearer that we were thinking in the same direction. So, the Fulbright notice came out at the perfect time for me”, he recalls.
For Yunes, the relevance of José Ricardo's research lies in following an unconventional line of reasoning. “When we had the idea, we thought about the Japanese martial art aikido. It is a practice in which the person uses the energy that the opponent is producing. In this hypothesis, the cell would be coming with its own hyperactivation and, instead of stopping it, you will continue that hyperactivation movement.”, compares the advisor.
Although Müschen works more comprehensively with the immune system — specifically with B lymphocytes —, José Ricardo's expectation is that his exchange with the group headed by the Yale researcher will bring valuable contributions to his research in Brazil. “I will work in the USA, among other things, with a new variation of the CRISPR system, which is capable of performing stem cell genome editing with very high efficiency and yield.” José Ricardo intends, during his exchange, to generate a human immune system in mice, which will have cells modified in a very specific way to be able to approach this new paradigm.
