History

The Brazilian Materials Research Society (SBPMat) was created on June 26, 2001, in the “General Assembly of Constitution”, culminating a process of three years, which was conducted by Prof. Guillermo Solórzano (PUC-Rio) and a group of physicists, engineers, and chemists of several Brazilian institutions.

One of the first important moments of such process was a Pan-American event on research, technology, and education in materials field, organized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with Science and technology institutions from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and held on June, 1998. In such workshop, it was evident for some Brazilian researchers that the materials national community needed a scientific society of multidisciplinary character to represent it. At that time, some associations and events of the area already existed, but they were sectoral or monodisciplinary.

In early 2000, the talks and exchanges of e-mails on the creation of a Brazilian materials research society started. Next, throughout that year, a group of researchers got in charge of personally presenting the proposal of the foundation of the society in a series of ten events and meetings held in several cities of Brazil. At the end of such campaign, the foundation of a materials multidisciplinary society had thousands of adhesions – and a few objections.

At the end of that year of 2000, the “Materials Interdisciplinary Commission” was formed, constituted by distinguished researchers acting in Brazil. The commission was devoted to continue progressing in the creation of the society.

In July, 2002, six months after its formal creation, SBPMat held in Rio de Janeiro its inaugural meeting. Its format, based on thematic symposia, which remains up to the present, was original in Brazil at the time. The first edition of the event had 400 participants and featured interaction between different areas of knowledge, and between several countries worldwide. Since then, the meeting has been held once a year in several Brazilian cities. In the last few editions, it gathered more than 1,500 participants.

In addition to the organization of the annual meeting and of other international events, SBPMat has carried out other actions for the Materials community and for the society in general. In 2012, the society launched the SBPMat newsletter, a monthly electronic bulletin dedicated to the  dissemination and popularization of Materials Science and Technology, focusing on the work and people from Brazil. An English version was launched in 2014. SBPMat also maintains accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Slideshare. In 2014, the society created the SBPMat University Chapters program, which promotes the formation of teams of students formally linked to SBPMat to develop activities to complement their academic formation. In the same year, the society prepared, in partnership with the Institute of Physics, the document Science Impact, an overview on the materials research in Brazil, in English, available in digital and printed version.