CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

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• CNPq’s investment map in Brazil and in the world

Created in 1951 to promote and encourage science development, especially in the field of nuclear physics, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) has completed 60 years and is more comprehensive with 69.190  scholars (2009 data) who focus on science development in the country.

CNPq is an agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) which aims to promote scientific and technological research and also train and qualify researchers in the country and abroad (see CNPq’s investment map in Brazil and in the world - content in Portuguese). Today CNPq has scholars who conduct research across 37 countries spanning five continents and in the year 2010 alone, invested R$ 1.6 billion

Being one of the largest and most solid state structures supporting Science, Technology and Innovation of developing countries, the Council is made up of an Executive Board responsible for managing the institution and an Advisory Board in charge of institutional policies and greater distribution of CNPq’s decision making power.

Lattes Platform

The Lattes Platform is an integrated database of resumes, research groups and institutions developed by CNPq. With 231,913 professors’ resumes and 131.805 registered doctors’ resumes, the platform became strategic for the development of policies of the Ministry of Science and Technology and other government agencies working in this field.

Created in 1999 by CNPq, the Lattes Curriculum is a part of the Lattes Platform and became the national standard for registration of academic and professional activities conducted by the country’s students and researchers. Nowadays it’s adopted by most funding agencies, universities and research institutes to assess researchers, professors and students. The updated Lattes Curriculum is one of the requirements for obtaining scholarships and financial aid. In 2009, CNPq launched a new version of the tool, which gained new features - like the ability to check for citations in articles published in journals indexed in the Web of Science (one of the most relevant in the science field), and the possibility to cross reference data.

The idea of standardizing the registration of Brazilian researchers’ resumes comes from the 1980s. At the time, CNPq established the Curriculum Base, which in addition to being used for resumes evaluation, also creates a database for the selection of consultants and experts. With the arrival of the Internet and advancement of computing, paper forms were replaced with electronic files. In the late 1990s, two groups from Federal University of Pernambuco and Federal University of Santa Catarina, allied with Multisoft company and technicians of Superintendencies of Informatics and Planning, developed a version of the resume that was incorporated into all existing versions.

To register your resume in the Lattes Platform, it is not necessary to have a career in science or academics. Anyone can utilize the tool. To do this, click on the link, register your email address and follow the five steps of the process indicated on the page. Please have your identification card and individual tax id numbers handy.

Sources: (contents in portuguese)
CNPq
Lattes Platform