6th Brazilian Congressional Study Mission on Innovation

WASHINGTON – The Brazil Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center partnered with Brazil’s Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (Interfarma) to organize and host the Sixth Brazilian Congressional Study Mission on Innovation from April 9-13, 2017 in Cambridge, Mass. and Washington, DC. The missions, which first launched in April 2011, serve to connect members of the Brazilian Congress with leading experts from academia, government, and industry through a series of conferences on fostering innovation in science and technology. Previous missions have taken more than fifty legislators to the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Department of State, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the London King’s College Brazil Institute, and the Institute of the Americas at the University of California San Diego.

The mission’s sixth iteration brought eleven members of the Brazilian Congress first to Cambridge, Mass., where they attended a series of seminars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aimed at translating success in creating ecosystems of innovation in Cambridge to the Brazilian experience. While at MIT, the members of Congress met with Brazilian PhD candidates and post docs in the science and technology fields.

The participants also visited several research and development labs throughout the greater Boston area including EMD Serono’s Research & Development Institute, Pfizer’s Center for Therapeutic Innovation, and AbbVie’s Bioresearch Center to learn about recent advances in biomedical and immunological research and technology, as well as to discuss the conditions necessary to promote and facilitate innovative research.

During their time in Washington, participants attended seminars at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Brazilian Embassy and the U.S. Department of State. A variety of experts, including members of the Brazilian scientific diaspora in the United States and U.S. specialists in innovation policies, discussed topics such as U.S.-Brazil scientific collaboration, recent political developments in the United States, and the role of government in protecting intellectual property and encouraging innovation.