Thirty seven students from Brazil have just arrived, and another thirty will join them in September in order to attend the University of Pisa for six months or for a year. All this is thanks to the "Science without Frontiers" programme, a large scale initiative for mobility and for the internationalisation of the Brazilian university and research system inaugurated by President Dilma Roussef in 2011. The programme aims at giving more than 75.000 young Brazilians the chance to experience of study and research abroad. The students coming to Pisa will enrol in the degree programmes in Engineering, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Agricultural Sciences and Pharmacology of the University of Pisa. During the month of August they will stay at the Praticelli Residence.
The University of Pisa, along with another 10 Italian Universities, has been chosen by the Brazilian government to host the students in order to enhance their study and research experience and to integrate the Brazilian research and higher education system more closely in consolidated international networks. The "Sciences without Frontiers" programme is coordinated by CAPES and CNPq, the Brazilian government's agencies responsible for strengthening the competences of the country's university and research system. It concentrates on short and medium term mobility in order to fund the studies abroad of Brazilian young people who will return to their home universities to complete their studies and obtain their degrees.
Though the Brazilian embassy in Italy, the CAPES and CNPq Agencies selected a certain number of Italian universities and research centres with which to develop a special mobility scheme within the "Science without Frontiers" programme. Participation in this initiative is linked to the University of Pisa's internationalisation strategy, which includes establishing new contacts with an eye to participation in international research projects. Mobility towards the University of Pisa involves students of all three levels of higher education: soon doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows will arrive.