B-MRS at the annual meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC).

From the left, Marcos Pimenta, Glaura Goulart Silva (scientific director of SBPMat) and Aldo Zarbin in the panel on carbon nanostructures at the 60th Annual SBPC Meeting.
From the left, Marcos Pimenta, Glaura Goulart Silva (scientific director of SBPMat) and Aldo Zarbin in the panel on carbon nanostructures at the 60th Annual SBPC Meeting.

The Brazilian Materials Research Society (B-MRS) was present at the 69th Annual Meeting of the SBPC  (Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science), represented by one of its board members, Professor Glaura Goulart Silva (UFMG). A free event and open to society, the annual SBPC meeting has been held since 1948 in public universities in different Brazilian states. This year, the meeting was held at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), in Belo Horizonte (state of Minas Gerais), from July 16 to 22, with the central theme “Innovation –Diversity – Transformations.”

“The 69th Annual SBPC Meeting was an area of resistance to the dismantling of science and technology in Brazil,” declared B-MRS scientific director, Goulart Silva. “The Brazilian community actively involved in science, of all ages, origins and functions, has united in a clear message: science and education are investments, it is on this basis that we can build a future for our people,” she said.

As part of the event’s program, Professor Goulart Silva participated in the roundtable “Carbon Nanostructures: The Next Technological Revolution?” which took place on July 17 from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. The other members of the roundtable were Professor Aldo Zarbin (UFPR), President of the Brazilian Society of Chemistry (SBQ), and Professor Marcos Pimenta (UFMG), coordinator of the INCT of Carbon Nanomaterials and of the Center for Nanomaterials (CTNano), of which Professor Goulart Silva is vice-coordinator.

Carbon nanomaterials, their structure, properties and applications were presented at the roundtable, which had a large audience and many questions raised, focusing on their potential to contribute to various technological areas. “We discussed how nanotechnology can impact a new technological era that has sustainability as a fundamental requirement,” informed the scientific director of SBPMat. “The members and participants of the roundtable expounded on a joint vision that a wide range of nanomaterials will occupy relevant spaces in future technologies. Not only carbon nanomaterials, but also that carbon nanotubes and graphene are indisputably very important systems in this set,” she says.

According to Goulart Silva, all participants in the session emphasized the need for investments in science and technology in Brazil, so that the advances made in areas such as nanotechnology continue.