USP has 50 programs in the area of “Arts and Humanities”, representing 29% of the total of postgraduate programs in our university. About 28% of USP supervisors are linked to this area. Data produced on the basis of the Scopus system, for the period 2012-2016, indicates that about 25% of USP’s international co-authorship is concentrated in this area. Of the 50 programs, 12 have scored 6 or 7 on the CAPES assessment. Therefore, this is an area with significant presence in the USP postgraduate system, whose leadership in the Brazilian postgraduate system is confirmed by several indicators of academic production. The proposed project aims at increasing the presence of high level academic production in the international scenario as well as the exchange of USP researchers / professors with the best universities in the world. Research involves the aspects in which USP’s teaching and academic production has comparative advantages, as detailed in the section on projects.

In the thematic area “Arts and Humanities”, the proposal is divided into three major topics: social sciences, language studies and arts.

In the social sciences topic, projects will focus on violence and crime, racial and gender issues, labor markets, education, international migration, religion, political participation and protest, trade unions and public policies, contemporary inequalities, well-being and its link with the promotion of health, understanding the mechanisms of governing social life, socio-spatial segregation processes, in its dimensions and geographic scales, urban crisis and the production of the inhabited world, the international insertion of Brazilian economics, challenges of law in face of transitionalization and internationalization, political representation and its contemporary transformations, innovation and sustainability strategies of organizations, and metropolitan studies.

In language studies, the projects will emphasize language dynamics, epistemological, descriptive, analytical and formative dimensions, and the fact that literature transforms the world and the world transforms literature.

In the area of arts, two themes will be relevant: to open new paths to artistic practices in performing arts, visual arts and music, and to advance an agenda that should strengthen the researches in the fields of digital humanities, film and audiovisual studies, and communications.

At the present stage, the strengthening of the internationalization of academic production in the area of “Arts and Humanities” involves the formation of human resources with solid and updated theoretical and practical basis, critical thinking and autonomy. In other words, internationalization must become one of the main axes of postgraduate programs within this thematic area. The project seeks to stimulate the double degree of USP students, the intense academic exchange with universities and researchers abroad. The arrival of visiting professors and researchers, particularly young talent, is a fundamental characteristic of the proposal. It is intended to attract high-level researchers (seniors or young talents) to act more directly in the co-orientation of students, offering intensive courses and international seminars, as well as enabling workshops among institutions to enhance the interaction between the students and researchers.

Projects and graduate participants programs

This thematic area congregates an expressive number of programs of excellence, with strong international insertion and tradition of many decades. There are 22 programs, of which half (11) received the highest score (7) in the last four-year evaluation of Capes and 5 programs received a grade 6. The consolidated competence in these programs allows to address challenges ranging from the understanding of phenomena at the subatomic scale up to scale of the universe. Of special interest are terrestrial processes that affect the balance and sustainability of our planet. In the basic and natural sciences, such as astronomy, physics, geosciences, mathematics and chemistry, there is a significant participation of USP in projects organized in vast international networks which are currently underway. The objectives in this thematic area are part of the strategic vision of internationalization of the University, seeking to consolidate and expand international leadership in areas where we already have excellence, taking advantage of themes in which Brazil arouses special interest. As an example, we mention the atmospheric sciences, which are of great relevance to studies of climate change, where research in the Amazon region is carried out with consolidated international leadership at USP. We understand that the current times offers important opportunities to attract international researchers, young talents from other nationalities, to establish themselves in Brazil. The excellence of our postgraduate programs should be expanded through increased exchange and promotion of international research and human resources training environments, with the expansion of dual degree agreements (goal of 50% increase); in recent years, there has been a great expansion in the provision of English language courses to increase the diversity of nationalities in our student body, which will be strengthened; we intend to increase agreements with our international partners to promote greater exchange in the offering of postgraduate courses, both by foreign professors at USP and by USP faculty members abroad, with the aim of increasing the international visibility of the knowledge existing here; we will develop structuring actions in the postgraduate programs that received grade 4 (four programs), in order to raise them to a level of excellence.

Projects and graduate participants programs

USP congregates 88 PPGs in this thematic area, comprising 17.1% programs grade 4, 44.3% grades 5 and 38.6% Proex excellence programs (Grades 6 and 7). All programs focus on 12 Capes evaluation areas of knowledge and were responsible for the production of more than 19,500 articles (Source: Scival, May 2018), in which 30.6% of them with international collaboration and a normalized impact by citation of 1.43. Thus, the programs have strong international insertion and established capacity to produce quality science. The programs seek to understand the pathophysiological phenomena of the main diseases and health problems, to study and propose public policies for society, as well as to create diagnostic tools and treatment. Today, the highest mortality rate in the Brazilian population is due chronic non-transmissible diseases, impacting economically and forcing governments to direct considerable resources to health and education policies to promote the well-being of the population. Thus, in these 30 subprojects that make up this area, we aim to:

a. Strengthen the training of qualified human resources capable of nuclear and lead research groups in medium and long-term research and teaching institutions by stimulating international mobility, exchange of experts with renowned researchers and double degrees (an increase of 50 %);

b. To consolidate and consolidate new international partnerships with institutions and groups of leading researchers in frontier areas of knowledge, promoting a new integrated vision in Postgraduate, by allowing courses with the participation of senior researchers from different institutions, even in a single course, with new tools in English (50% increase);

c. To advance in the frontier of the knowledge of each sub-area of research in this subject, seeking to improve infrastructure (physical and human) in research, exchange of expertise, increase the visibility of research done at USP, and the insertion of researchers in large network of Internationa projectsl;

d. To attract prominent young researchers to develop research in laboratories of great scientific and social relevance within the thematic area; and

e. Structure grade 4 programs with PhD students seeking to achieve academic excellence in the Postgraduate Program in the next four-year Capes evaluation (20% increase in the number of PPGs Proex).

Projects and graduate participants programs

Brazil’s GDP has oscillated in recent years between the ninth and sixth of the world’s highest, at R $ 6.6 trillion reais, according to data from the IBGE in 2017. Each sector of economic activity depends partly on continuous technological development, which, for in turn, feeds on science, engineering and the demands of society. The use of each new technological wave by a country presupposes the existence of professionals with specific training and high critical capacity. The years of training of these professionals precede the years of the economic activity of a certain technological wave, in this way, the planning of the subjects must be carried out with agility and foresight. The subject area “Technology” includes, in this proposal, the Graduate Programs of Biotechnology, Geology, Engineering (Environmental, Civil, Electrical, Hydraulic, Materials, Mechanical, Metallurgical, Naval, Production and Transport). Currently, some of the topics considered relevant are: – the mitigation of greenhouse gases, for example through the capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or reduction of carbon dioxide emissions; – to mitigate the environmental impact of chemical processes; – the use of renewable energies; – relations between genome and reactions in microorganisms; – distributed control systems and distributed sensor networks; – smart cities; – biological tissue engineering; – constitutive models of biological tissues; – neuroengineering; – biosensors; – increased wear and corrosion resistance; – and ultra high strength steels. The specific objectives of this thematic area are the joint international training of researchers, the offering of intensive courses among partner universities, a 50% increase in students in double-degree agreements, attracting young researchers from the world to join the faculty staff at USP and foster mobility of faculties and researchers in academic missions between partner universities.

Projects and graduate participants programs