Students of the Master's in Neuroengineering program at the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) participated, on the morning of this Friday (8/4), in a lecture on entrepreneurship and innovation focused on the Centelha Program, promoted by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae RN). The lecture, which took place in the auditorium of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience (IIN-ELS), one of the ISD units located in Macaíba (RN), is part of a series of initiatives that aim to increasingly integrate the area of research with the market and innovation, in order to allow the products developed by researchers to reach society more quickly and efficiently. 

During the morning, Gilka Fernandes, a certified business consultant at Sebrae, spoke about the steps to take to register projects in the Centelha Project call for proposals, which offers financial resources and training for people interested in starting their own businesses. The Centelha Program is promoted by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTI), in partnership with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the National Council of State Foundations for Research Support (CONFAP), the CERTI Foundation and the Brazilian Studies and Projects Funding Agency (Finep). The main objectives of the program include the creation of new technology-based companies; the generation of innovations that are of social and business interest; the creation of a culture of innovative entrepreneurship and the consequent strengthening of the country's innovation ecosystems. 

“We understand that we need to reach out to universities, academies and students themselves, to help them get this idea out of their heads and onto paper. We want them to understand that this idea they have can go to market and can be transformed into an innovative business that can solve an existing pain or problem,” says Gilka Fernandes. 

According to the consultant, it is necessary to strengthen the link between the market and the scientific production carried out in Academia, so that they can work side by side in the search for more efficient services and products that have an impact on the population. “We need to work together: the market needs to pay attention to Academies and students, because they are the ones there researching, studying, and looking more deeply into certain aspects related to people's needs. When we talk about 'innovative business', we have this perspective that it must come from research, from a structured knowledge base, so that it can be taken to the market with a foundation”, she says. 

ISD professor and researcher Fabrício Brasil, who had two students approved in the Global Grad Show’s entrepreneurship call, spoke about the importance of broadening students’ vision of the possibilities that exist through research. “We have been working a lot with this idea of innovation and entrepreneurship here, because we do a lot of cool stuff, but many students still have the idea that Academia is limited to scientific publications. We have been trying to change their vision, because the innovation market is very promising, and we see that many of the projects developed here have great potential for this,” highlights Fabrício Brasil. 

In addition to the projects by Neuroengineering masters Rommel Araújo and Mouhamed Zorkot, who were selected for the Global Grad Show in 2021, two former ISD students, sisters Tâmara and Tássia Nunes, were selected in the call by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for the Human Resources Program in Strategic Areas (RHAE), which aims to support projects that contribute to scientific, technological, innovation and entrepreneurship development in Brazil.