With the UF Engineering Innovation Institute as their hosts, a delegation of eleven Brazilian academics and administrators visited Gainesville, Orlando, Tampa and Tallahassee last week over a two-week period to learn more about how Florida has grown its innovation ecosystem through public and private partnerships. Particularly, they wanted to strengthen their organization\u2019s knowledge of intellectual property, technology transfer, entrepreneurship and marketplace intelligence \u2013\u00a0all of which they hope to employ in the State of Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n
Centro Paula Souza, or CPS, manages a network of 63 public colleges and 218 technical high schools around the State of Sao Paulo. They educate 320,000 students annually. This visit was part of their PAPI INOVA Paula Souza project, which employs 200 \u201cinnovation agents\u201d to help connect their 281 academic institutions with large companies, entrepreneurs and small- to medium-sized businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UF College of Engineering and CPS have been working together for several years,\u201d said Erik Sander, director of the UF Engineering Innovation Institute, or EII. \u201cThis visit was a landmark event for Florida and Brazil. It served to strengthen our ties, and will undoubtedly have a positive impact on an already flourishing economic relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Florida Chamber of Commerce lists Brazil as Florida\u2019s largest trading partner and top export market in the world \u2013 with $20.5 billion in trades last year, the largest amount ever between Florida and a foreign country. The leadership at the EII has created alliances with CPS and other entities in Brazil to build unique public\/private partnerships that can transcend North and Latin America.<\/p>\n
In addition to EII, the Center for Latin American Studies and the Florida-Brazil Linkage Institute have\u00a0been instrumental to establishing the relationship with CPS. Their director, Emilio Bruna, PhD, has been encouraged by the unique position UF is in to work with entrepreneurs in Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been exciting to see the mutually beneficial partnership between COE, EII, and CPS come to fruition,\u201d said Bruna. \u201cHere at UF we have the rare combination of advanced engineering, experts in innovation, and an understanding of the cultural context in which Brazilian entrepreneurs are working. You could sense the excitement from everyone, throughout the entire visit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The delegation included the director of INOVA Paula Souza, Dr. Oswaldo Massambani, and 10 of his colleagues. The assistant director of EII, David Whitney, established the delegation\u2019s comprehensive agenda with site visits including UF Office of Technology Licensing, UF Office of Research, UF Tech Connect, UF\u2019s Innovation Hub UF Latin American Business Environment Institute and UF College of Engineering\u2019s Industry Programs office, as well as the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator and the Innovation Academy. They also visited the University of Central Florida, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida.<\/p>\n
In addition to these more academic meetings, the delegation visited with leadership from the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, CareerSource North Central Florida, the Florida Small Business Development Center, and Gainesville-area companies InterMed, Nanotherapeutics, Prioria Robotics, Verigo, and RAPiD Genomics. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe innovation ecosystem that we have created in Gainesville has attracted global corporations to come here, and it encourages local startups to stay here,\u201d Sander said. \u201cWe want our trade partnerships to be healthy and collaborative, and so it is a welcome opportunity to share what is working for us, with others.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The team of eleven from the State of Sao Paulo explored Gainesville’s innovation ecosystem as well as other parts of the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[27,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eii","category-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n