Photo: Participants of the expedition to the Arctic
The first official Brazilian Arctic expedition, a group of five professors, to Svalbard took place in July 2023 with the aim of collecting materials for new research and comparison of the North Pole and Antarctica, a continent studied for more than 40 years by Brazilian researchers as part of the Brazilian Antarctic Program (Proantar). Brazil's interest in the Arctic is driven by a desire to correct imbalances in the study of the polar regions and demonstrate its growing profile in international relations as a strong regional power.
Read about the first expedition here
The second Arctic Brazilian scientific expedition, consisting of two professors, a researcher and two students, began on July 1. The 12-day timeframe suggests a focused and intensive research schedule. Last year, Brazilian researchers headed to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard.
We want to collect more material, new species for research from a genomic and biotechnological point of view. Such data will be used for the possible development of new drugs, cosmetics, and agricultural applications, says Marcelo Ramada, doctor of molecular biology and expedition coordinator.
In addition to Marcelo Ramada, the expedition includes Stefan Machado Doms, a doctor of genomic sciences and biotechnology, Tais Campos de Souza, a biologist and project researcher, and students Giovanna Melo Nishitani and Ana Giulia da Matta Maciel, studying biology and biomedicine. They all work at the Catholic University of Brasilia (UCB).
The expedition is sponsored by UCB and the Brazilian Union of Catholic Education (UBEC) for the logistics part, and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) for the scientific part.
Professor Marcelo Ramada and his team are committed to advancing Arctic research in the coming years under new Briotech project, a UCB analytical laboratory approved last year. The project will be in operation till December 2027. He said that “next year we are planning to go to Alaska and Canada. In 2026 – to Greenland and Iceland, and in 2027 we intend to visit other Arctic countries.”
Source: Globo.com
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