In South America, Uruguay is showing an inverse trend seen in its neighboring countries. Whilst only 0.48% of GDP is invested in R&D, scientists are being the protagonists in this. Uruguay is dealing well with the pandemic, and their coronavirus cases are far fewer than its neighbors, thus the only Latin American country in the EU’s Covid-19 “safe list.” Ivana Aguiar and María Eugenia Pérez, who are professors at Universidad de la República and deeply engaged volunteers within the Materials Research Society (MRS) since 2011, explain how the COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted education and R&D in Uruguay.
Unlike most of the countries during this pandemic and the big economy deficit of Uruguay, most of the budget dedicated to research is not under the budget cut policies—at least for this year. The government reflected on the scientists’ role to contain the pandemic situation and the research community has been key to developing tests for the pandemic.
Prof. Aguiar and Prof. Pérez work with semiconductor nanomaterials for radiation detection, photocatalysis for water remediation, and medical applications. When asked how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their lab activities, they were unanimous that even though they are now slowly going back to normal, some of their planned lab activities had been postponed. Both are taking advantage of many virtual conferences to share their research, and they were pleased to see an increasing offer of webinars from MRS. Prof. Aguiar, who has organized the MRS virtual event “Sustainability in my Community” during the 2016 MRS Spring Meeting, was happy to learn about the latest news of a virtual mode for the next MRS meeting.
Besides reading and writing articles, for them it has been a period focused on teaching in a completely virtual-mode classroom, which demanded a lot of time to adapt for both students and educators. Even though COVID-19 cases in Uruguay are low, Universidad de la República plans to continue virtual-mode classes for the next semester as well. Commenting further about the positive impact of virtual modality, which was already a trend, Prof. Pérez says, “It actually helped to connect more often with people I would not be in contact with so often, and I believe that commerce, meetings, etc. will be kept virtual to a high degree [in the post-pandemic situation].” With her little daughter at home while she works, it has been more challenging for Prof. Aguiar, “It is difficult to concentrate in long-time activities while working from home.”
When asked about what they expect the post-pandemic R&D situation in Uruguay will look like, they both said that science visibility during this pandemic will positively impact R&D budget prospects. Prof. Pérez says, “In terms of science policy, we showed that science is a critical aspect of a country’s development. This was the case for Uruguay, in which very little of the GDP was destined to research. Scientists should make themselves heard about the importance of scientific research and promoting science careers in the country.”
- Monica Jung de Andrade
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