Twelve Brazilian researchers are among the world's most influential scientists in their respective areas of expertise. The list, produced annually by the consulting firm Clarivate Analytics since 2014, considers the number of citations per article published over a ten-year period.
Those selected belong to the group of 1% of researchers who maintained the highest citation averages during the period. In all, around 6,000 researchers were selected, in 21 areas of knowledge, in addition to cross-cutting fields.
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The researcher Paulo Eduardo Artaxo Netto, from the University of São Paulo (USP), is the Brazilian that most appears on the list. He was mentioned in 2014, 2015 and 2018. Professor at the Institute of Physics, Artaxo works in areas such as global climate change, environment in the Amazon It is urban air pollution.
“The research we have been doing in the Amazon has brought implications for the development of public policies”, he said.
He studies, for example, the impact of burning emissions on public health and the Amazonian environment. “We have demonstrated through a series of works that deforestation and fires have a very large global impact on the environment.”
Research carried out by Artaxo shows how the process of occupation of the Amazon is affecting the hydrological cycle in the region.
"This is important and has implications, for example, for Brazilian agricultural production, and has implications for the role of the Amazon in the global cycle."
List
The United States is the country with the highest number of mentioned researchers, 2,639 in all; next comes the United Kingdom, with 546; and in third place China, with 482. The first three most cited universities are American: Harvard University (USA), 186; National Institutes of Health (NIH), with 148; and Stanford University, which has 100 most cited researchers.
USP is the Brazilian institution with the largest number of Brazilians mentioned in the list, a total of four. In addition to Artaxo, they are part of the ranking Paulo Andrade Lotufo It is Guilherme Vanoni Polanczyk, from the Faculty of Medicine (FM); It is Carlos Augusto Monteiro, from the School of Public Health (FSP).
The others are: Alvaro Avezum (Institute of Cardiology Dante Pazzanese), Luisa Gigante Carvalheiro (Goias Federal University), Adriano Gomes da Cruz (Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro), Daniel Granato (State University of Ponta Grossa), Miriam Dupas Hubinger (Unicamp), Renata Valeriano Tonon (Embrapa), Ana Maria Baptista Menezes It is Cesar Gomes Victora (Federal University of Pelotas).
Among the areas of knowledge developed by Brazilian researchers are agricultural sciences, environment, geosciences, medicine and social sciences, in addition to cross-cutting areas.
The researcher Miriam Hubinger, from the Faculty of Food Engineering (FEA) at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), had, among the most cited works, research carried out with açaí pulp.
“We tried to stabilize this pulp, dry it and ensure that it retains its antioxidant properties and has a long shelf life. shelf, a long useful life and that were articles published in 2009 and after 10 years being much cited they are being recognized”, He explained.
Another innovative work was the microencapsulation of linseed oil and roasted coffee oil.
“In the case of coffee oil, in order for it to retain its aroma and flavor properties, more stable, and linseed oil so that it would be more stable during storage, not oxidize so easily. There was a whole development, formulation and process work and made them innovative at the time they were published ”, he pointed out.
Investments
The researchers consider the inclusion of Brazilians in the list promising, but draw attention to the need for continued investment in science and technology.
“We have the brains, but we also need the money. Of course, the ideal was that it had much more. In the United States, you know that the system is much more encouraged and research is much more valued than here. That's why Brazil has half of the researchers from the university that is in the 50th position [University of Maryland], but I think it's already something for us to be on the list”, evaluated Hubinger.
Artaxo considers that, as it is among the ten largest economies in the world, Brazil should have a better position among the most cited scientific authors.
“The message is that being on this list of the most cited researchers in the world shows that Brazil has enormous potential for scientific production, but which is not being properly used due to the lack of investment in science and technology. This delays our development and delays the implementation of science-based public policies,” he said.
The information is from Agência Brasil.