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SCIENCE: Excellence and Cooperation in the Developing South

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 1 2006 (IPS) - High-quality scientific research is also carried out in the developing South, especially in response to problems specific to the Third World, and in a spirit of cooperation – all of which will be on display as of Saturday at a paradisiacal Brazilian beach resort.

Eminent researchers who have made important contributions in the fields of medicine and mathematics will receive prizes from the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) during the association’s 10th general conference, taking place Sep. 2-6 in a posh hotel in Angra dos Reis, a tourist resort located 150 km from Rio de Janeiro.

The four international award-winning scientists will discuss their research at the meeting, held under the theme Scientific Research in Developing Countries: Building a New Future.

The ministers of science and technology of the Group of 77 (G77) – the 132-member bloc of developing countries in the United Nations – will also meet during the event.

Brazilian researcher Jacob Palis, director-emeritus of the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro, will present mathematical models that he has developed to understand complex phenomena “that evolve over time, like global climate change, population growth patterns and weather forecasts,” he told IPS.

These models are aimed at improving forecasts with respect to nonlinear dynamic phenomena that present a large number of possibilities, in order to reduce uncertainties, he said.

For his work in this area, Palis will be awarded the Trieste Science Prize, the top accolade granted by the TWAS (whose acronym comes from its original name, Third World Academy of Sciences).

The prize will be shared by C.S. Seshadri, director of the Chennai Mathematical Institute in India, one of the world’s pre-eminent centres for mathematics. Seshadri is being recognised for the prominent role he has played in the field of algebraic geometry, one of the dominant fields in 21st century mathematics.

The other two winners of the Trieste Science Prize for 2006 are Chen Ding-Shinn, dean of the National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and Rao Zihe, a professor at Tsinghua University and director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Biophysics, in Beijing.

Chen discovered that hepatitis B causes not only cirrhosis but also liver cancer, and gained support for a comprehensive and highly successful vaccination campaign in Taiwan, which has since been adopted by countries around the world.

Rao is being honoured for his contributions to biology and his research on viruses, such as the one that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a global health scare several years ago.

The prize takes its name from the northeastern Italian city of Trieste, where TWAS is based. The honour is awarded in association with the city government and Illycafé, a leading Italian coffee shop chain also based in that port city.

Participants at the conference will also hear presentations by the winners of other prizes granted by TWAS and institutions like the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, which carries the name of the Pakistani-born Nobel Laureate in Physics who founded the centre in Trieste in 1983.

In addition, the G77 will present its Award for Science, Technology and Innovation, to Colombian physicist Pedro Antonio Prieto.

More participants are expected at this year’s gathering than at any other conference held by TWAS, which is “the leading institution for the strengthening of science and technology in developing countries,” in the words of Palis, who as vice president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences is helping organise the event in Angra dos Reis.

Besides the 400 eminent scientists invited to the TWAS conference, at least 20 ministers of science and technology are expected to take part in the G77 meeting on Sunday. And on Monday, the Third World Network of Scientific Organisations (TWNSO) forum will discuss means of financing research and innovations in the developing South.

The conference will not be limited to purely scientific questions, but will include symposia on energy technologies, food production, the environment, and nanotechnology, said Palis.

Brazil “will set the tone,” not only as host, but also because of its “excellent foreign policy” in this area, which is “based on solidarity with neighbouring countries, with Africa,” and with other parts of the developing world, in terms of “cooperation, not aid, which is a term that should be abolished,” he said.

To illustrate, Palis cited the scholarships that have enabled a number of students from Africa to study in Brazil. Exchanges of this kind “modify the global map of science and technology,” because the doctorate degree that a scientist earns abroad “generates an alliance that is never broken,” he underlined.

Another event to take place during the conference is the first Regional Conference of Young Scientists, organised by the Latin America office of TWAS, which will bring together 30 researchers in biology under the age of 40 from different countries to present their theses and discuss contributions to sustainable development.