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CEPAC |
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Chemical Engineering PanAmerican Collaboration |
History
CEPAC (Chemical Engineering Pan-American Collaboration) was conceived as a result of the activities held during the Pan-American Workshop to promote collaboration in Chemical Engineering.
Pan-American Workshop:
DETAILS
The workshop was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2-5, 1998, with the local support of CNPq, FINEP, COPPE/UFRJ (Brazil) in cooperation with NSF (USA), CONICET (Argentina) and CONICYT (Chile).
The main objectives of this workshop were:
- Stimulate sustainable collaboration between the Pan-American countries in the field of Chemical Engineering.
- Identify innovative collaborative approaches.
- Identify frontier research areas of common interest that can foster and focus cooperative research projects.
Identify methods of chemical engineering education for future needs.
Improve dissemination of chemical engineering information.
Recommend innovative approaches for industry-university collaboration.
The workshop focused on four topical areas: Separations, Thermodynamics and Interfacial Science, Catalysis and Reaction Engineering, Process Systems Engineering, and Biotechnology
About 60 participants from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and USA, including observers from Peru, Uruguay and Colombia, and several individuals from industry were invited by the national cooperating agencies. These participants were involved in several activities such as panel presentations and discussions in working groups.
CONCLUSIONS
The major conclusions derived from these panel presentations and discussions are:
- There are a number of collaborations already taking place between US and South American chemical engineering researchers. These include for instance projects in the areas of catalysis, biotechnology and process systems engineering.
- The level of research cooperation is rather modest, compared to existing programs of South America with European countries.
- In the area of chemical engineering education there are fewer collaborations and exchanges observed.
The following initial areas of research were identified as examples of common interest: Advanced and Critical Materials (includes Minerals); Fuel and Petrochemical Processes; Environmental Protection and Biotechnology, Food and Agricultural Industries.
RECOMMENDATIONS
As for mechanisms of collaboration, the four working groups made a number of specific suggestions that include the following:
- Significant increase of Joint Research Projects with participation of faculty and students from North and South America
that are to be funded jointly by the respective agencies (NSF, CNPq, FINEP, CONICET, CONICYT). These proposals would be evaluated as regular proposals in their respective countries and should meet regional demands as well as exploit multinational expertise.
Supplements to existing research projects in the US and South America that will allow short term visits by graduate students and faculty to exploit research resources that will help to advance and enhance the projects. (These could be known as the IREGS program: International Research Experience for Graduate Students). The supplements would require short proposals that would be handled by the corresponding agency of each country. The use of supplements should significantly reduce the proposal processing time. The supplements could also be used in Argentina and Chile to promote ACEP (Academic Exchange Programs or "split" Ph.D. students).
Joint workshops in areas of mutual interest to promote the exchange of scientific information between US and South American researchers. As part of this initiative, it is recommended that topical scientific meetings that normally take place in the US periodically be held in South American sites.
Short courses that for instance will be taught to groups of graduate students of several countries in South America, or seasonal Advanced schools (higher level courses). Some of these short courses could be taught jointly, especially if they are aimed at industry. Funding for the academic courses would be provided by the local national science agencies.
Projects with industrial involvement. The possibility of research participation by US and/or South American companies will be explored, particularly for the joint projects mentioned above, or with other existing programs, such as the NSF GOALI and IUCRC and equivalent CNPq, FINEP and FONDEF (Chile) programs. Aside from the benefit of providing real-world problems, involvement by industry could help science agencies to leverage funding.
Bilateral exchange of students and faculty through a new cooperative program between the Fullbright Program and the national science agencies.
In order to ensure that there is tangible progress on the above initiatives, the workshop proposed evaluation metrics that include:
- Number of joint projects and supplements;
- Number of joint publications;
- Number of visits by US and South American faculty and students between academic partners;
Percentage of projects that South American countries have in the proposed CEPAC program from the total number of international programs;
Number of short courses taught
Number of joint professional meetings.
The steering committee of CEPAC will meet in 1999 to evaluate the progress of the planned actions and stimulate new joint Pan-American Chemical Engineering activities.
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