International Alliance: Brazil

Brazil is one of the International Alliance’s target areas where the Université de Lyon is developing close relations with the State of São Paulo. The University of São Paulo (USP), the main academic partner, has also identified the Université de Lyon as an important strategic partner.

The Université de Lyon has set up a structured collaboration with the USP, in terms of both training and research. It offers dual-qualification training courses, scientific workshops, start-up funds and calls for joint research projects.

In 2020, the Université de Lyon is pursuing this approach by signing a framework agreement with the FAPESP funding agency (the São Paulo Research Foundation) to gain exposure and to get involved in bilateral actions with the three São Paulo State Universities (USP, Unicamp and Unesp), supported by cross-financing and reciprocal funding.

In March 2023, the Université de Lyon welcomed two Brazilian delegations: the first from the University of São Paulo (USP) on March 28, and the second from the FAPESP and the Butantan Institute on April 3.

Fruitful discussions between the heads of the various Brazilian and French institutions addressed the challenges of French-Brazilian cooperation in terms of training-research-innovation, and shared themes, such as human and animal health (One Health, ShapeMed@Lyon), engineering, agronomy and food safety, social sciences, exact sciences, etc.

The Butantan Institute delegation’s visit to the Lyon Public Hospitals (Hospices civils de Lyon – HCL) – East Lyon) highlighted the work of the site's teams, particularly in the fields of oncology and neurosciences. In order to capitalize on the discussions held, a series of cross-scientific workshops will be launched to allow French and Paulista researchers and research professors to identify common themes of interest and to conduct joint research.

As part of the International Triangular Partnerships in Higher Education (PITES), the USP joined forces with the Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Lumière Lyon 2 and Jean Monnet universities to create a delocalized law degree in 2014. The purpose of this degree is to train selected USP students in French law, in addition to Brazilian law. This three-year training program includes subjects taught at the USP, for which equivalence is granted in France, as well as French law courses taught in São Paulo by professors from the Lyon site.

At the end of the undergraduate degree, which lasts 5 years in Brazil, students will be awarded a double diploma, one from the University of São Paulo, and one from one of the institutions of the Université de Lyon. Each year, around ten UdL professors travel to Brazil to teach the classes of approximately fifty students. The first class of 20 students graduated in 2017.

The next stage in the PITES project is to relocate the second year of the French Master’s degree in Law, specializing in Business Law, enabling a French-Brazilian “Economic Law” course to be set up for students at the USP’s Faculty of Law.

In 2022, as part of this program and with the support of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, four research professors from the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 went to São Paulo for a teaching assignment in law.

Read the interview with Luisa Mesquita, a graduate of the dual-diploma delocalized law degree program in São Paulo, Brazil (FR)

The success of the PITES (International Triangular Higher Education Partnerships) Bachelor’s degree in law, delocalized in São Paulo, is evolving into a delocalized Master’s degree and is branching out locally into the field of economics and management. It has also become a nationwide reference, inspiring French higher education and research institutions.

A shared desire to increase mobility will allow for student exchanges (studies and research internships of three to six months), the establishment of residencies and joint research projects.

In terms of innovation and entrepreneurship, there are plans to exchange practices, including with partners of the UdL International Alliance in Canada.

Scientific collaborations between the Lyon and São Paulo Universities go back a long way. They have been supported by the French PALSE and IDEXLYON programs, as well as by Brazilian funding to set up start-up funds and/or calls for joint projects.

A new call for projects was launched in 2019 in order to support innovative, ambitious and highly structured joint research projects based on high priority areas of research for a three-year period.

The Université de Lyon-FAPESP partnership focuses on developing high-level scientific and technological cooperation in all fields of knowledge between the UdL institutions and the universities of the State of São Paulo. This is achieved by jointly funding scientific activities (such as discussions, workshops, seminars, etc.) and, in particular, research projects.

As part of this partnership, the Université de Lyon organized the French FAPESP week in November 2019, which was followed by a FAPESP-UdL joint call for projects in 2020. This call for projects aims to support research projects launched by the UdL member institutions and higher education institutions in State of São Paulo that focus on top priority research subjects.

FAPESP supports all areas of knowledge through mobility grants (for students and researchers), basic and applied research, research infrastructures, innovation and public-private relations, and strategic themes: biodiversity, bioenergy, global climate change, eScience and data science, public policies, public education, and the modernization of research-oriented public institutions. Find out more

Butantan is a research institute in the State of São Paulo in the field of health and vaccine production (immunobiology), and includes a production unit dedicated to the Coronavac. It has a long-term tradition of cooperation with France: Institut Pasteur, CEA, Biomerieux, SANOFI, etc.

As part of its new developments, Butantan is investing in oncology, and in particular in cell therapy for cancer treatment. It currently has two cell therapy centers, one in São Paulo and one in Ribeirão Preto. Find out more

Following two visits to the Lyon Saint-Étienne site by representatives from the Butantan Institute (in October 2022 and March 2023), new avenues of cooperation between public and private research on both sites are being explored.

► IRP – anthropogenic developments, metropolization and societies

Launched in 2021, this IRP (International Research Project) examines the upheavals that the new planetary ecological context is causing in contemporary societies and explores new ways of inhabiting the planet. The project involves 9 member institutions of the Université de Lyon ComUE, with the University of São Paulo as its main partner, and is led by Fabrice Bardet (CNRS 5600 Environment, city, society Joint Research Unit, Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics d’Etat) and Lucia Shimbo (Yby laboratory, Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, University of São Paulo).

Find out more