The attribution of these fellowships in 2009 strengths the innovating partnership between the promoter of the international event of music and art ‘Optimus Alive!09 Oeiras’ and the research institute, IGC. According to the IGC’s director António Coutinho: “The decision of ‘Everything is New’, shows that it is possible in Portugal to establish alternative means to fund scientific research, and also to contribute to a closer interaction between research centres, researcehrs and the public”.
In 2008, this partnership resulted in the presence of many IGC scientists at ‘passeio marítimo de Algés’ and in two fellowships awarded to recent graduates in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution. The call for these fellowships had 74 applications from young graduates around the country. The fellowships were attributed to Alexandre Leitão, 23 years old, graduated in Biology from “Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa” and to João Alves, 24 years old, graduated in Applied Biology from “Universidade do Minho”.
The project that Alexandre Leitão already started to develop, at the Evolution and Development team supervised by Élio Sucena, aims to tackle the evolutionary origins of immune system and will have collaborations with King`s College in London.
João Alves, supervised by Lounes Chikhi from Population and Conservation Genetics team, aims to study the impact of habitat fragmentation on the genetic diversity of endangered species. This project will have collaborations with “Univesiti Malaysia Sabah”, Danau Girang Field Centre and Cardiff University.
For more information:
Sílvia Castro
Unidade de Informação e Comunicação de Ciência
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
Tel: 21-446 4537
Fax: 21-440 7970
E-mail: sacastro@igc.gulbenkian.pt
Maria João Leão
Comunicação de Ciência e Relações Externa
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
Tel: 21-446 4677
Fax: 21-440 7970