In September, 2012, professor Amaral had taken part in a meeting at the headquarters of CNPq (Brazilian Council for the Scientific and Technological Development) called by Professor Celso de Melo, who was a director in the council. The theme of the meeting was the Materials Science and Engineering area, and the Advisory Boards of such body. The other participants of the meeting were the professors Gl\u00f3ria de Almeida Soares (from COPPE-UFRJ), Elson Longo (from UFSCar) and Jo\u00e3o Marcos Alcoforado Rebello (from COPPE-UFRJ).<\/p>\n
A document signed by the participants of the meeting pointed some problems with the evaluation of research projects in the Materials Area. To sum it up, due to the fact that there was no Advisory Board for the Materials Area at that time, the projects and other requests pertaining to Materials Science or Engineering were often appraised with debatable parameters or sent from area to area until someone was found who could evaluate them, a situation which significantly increased the number of appeals received by the CNPq and the time to reply to the requesting researcher. To solve such issue, the document proposed initially the creation of a committee with representatives from the several areas of knowledge involving Materials and also that the scientific societies with any relation to Materials were to be called to the debate, to find a solution fully backed by the technical and scientific community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis matter of the inclusion of a Materials area in the government fostering agencies had been considered since the mid-90s\u201d, L\u00edvio Amaral states. \u201cThat occurred within the context of creation of a Brazilian Materials society, having the MRS as a reference, which ended up occurring in the early 00s. At the time, there was a lot of debate in several situations, such as in the Brazilian Meetings on Condensed Matter Physics of the Brazilian Physics Society\u201d, he adds.<\/p>\n
In parallel, professor Amaral had been following-up on that matter within CAPES, where he was the coordinator of the Physics and Astronomy Area. According to Amaral, by means of evaluations conducted every three years, it was possible to verify that several post-graduation programs, regardless of the names they had and by which of CAPES\u2019s areas they were encompassed, were awarding master and doctorate degrees with intellectual production in Materials. \u201cSince, in addition to being department coordinator, I also took part in CAPES\u2019s Technical and Scientific Council, I had the opportunity to take that entire matter to debate in such Council\u201d, the professor\u00a0 comments.<\/p>\n
At that time, Jorge Almeida Guimar\u00e3es, who would become CAPES\u2019s president in 2004, was the coordinator of the Biological Sciences II Area and, like professor Amaral, took part in the Technical and Scientific Council and was a professor in the UFRGS. \u201cWe discussed at length the need to create two new areas, the Materials and Biotechnology areas\u201d, L\u00edvio Amaral tells us.<\/p>\n
In addition, Amaral recalls that another favorable coincidence then occurred. CAPES\u2019s president at the time was Professor Ab\u00edlio Afonso Baeta Neves, who had previously been the dean of post-graduation in UFRGS when the program of post-graduation in Materials Science had been submitted to the university, by initiative from professors of the Physics department, Amaral included, and of the Engineering and the Chemistry departments. \u201cIn summary, in that scenario, the discussion regarding new areas, inside and outside the Technical and Scientific Council, was very frequent due to such circumstances\u201d, professor Amaral sums it up.<\/p>\n
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