Infraestructure for research at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA/USP) - Year 2023

• Grant number: 23/16607-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Technical Reserve for Institutional Research Infrastructure
• Duration: March 01, 2024 - February 28, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Nuclear Engineering - Applications of Radioisotopes
• Principal Investigator: Ernani Pinto Junior
• Grantee: Ernani Pinto Junior
• Host Institution: Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

CENA/USP, Specialized Institute and Integration Body of the University of São Paulo, had, in December 2020, itsown body of 32 Professors hired in RDIDP. With regard to professors in RDIDP, there are 9 Professors (27.2%), 12Associate Professors (36.4%) and 12 PhD Professors (36.4%), working in three Scientific Divisions. Among theAssociate Professors, seven are MS 5.3 Professors. These Professors demonstrate excellence in universityactivities, highlighting the training of qualified human resources, as well as a scientific production in renownednational and international journals, with a high impact index. The high scientific productivity of CENA Professorscan also be proven by the high number of CNPq Productivity Scholarships: of the current 33 professors, 23 arescholarship holders (69.7% of the staff), 16 in category 1 (69.6 %), including 5 in category 1A. Other researchperformance indicators worth mentioning are the number of active CENA professors who are members of theBrazilian Academy of Sciences, 4 (12.5% of the faculty). CENA, which in 2021 completed 55 years of its creation,became the largest Specialized Institute of the University of São Paulo, starting to be considered an academiccenter of international excellence in the development of research in the areas of agriculture and the environment,through nuclear techniques , its scope still applies to other fields of science, also acting in the areas of appliedenvironmental and social sciences, presenting an important participation in the core activities of the University ofSão Paulo and counts, for the conduction of these activities, and the 33 Professors hired in RDIDP, are allocated inthree Scientific Divisions, equivalent to Departments in Full Units, namely: Division of Tropical EcosystemsFunctioning - DVECO, with 10 professors (3 Full Professors; 4 Associates and 3 Doctors) organized in 7Laboratories, - DVTEC , with 09 professors (3 Full Professors; 3 Associates and 3 PhD) in 5 Laboratories andDVPROD, with 14 professors (3 Full Professors; 5 Associates and 6 Doctor tors) in 10 Laboratories. Although CENAis framed as a Specialized Institute, teaching activities (Undergraduate - ESALQ/USP courses and two CAPES Level7 Graduate Programs), research (excellence) and extension, can perfectly qualify CENA as a Full Unit of Teaching,Research and Extension. Regarding undergraduate teaching, although CENA is not a Full Unit, from 2001 onwards,there has been a significant increase in the participation of CENA Professors who offer, in 2021, a total of 32subjects (11 compulsory, 16 optional and 5 mandatory/optional) to 6 ESALQ/USP courses. CENA participated andparticipates in thematic networks with the development of ten (10) Thematic Projects (FAPESP - Resources ofaround R$ 21 million reais. $ 7,321,031. Research works that highlight the activities of CENA professors in 2021are distributed in the areas of Agriculture and Biological Sciences (35%), Environmental Sciences (22%), EarthSciences (9%), Chemistry (5 %) and Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (5 %), in addition to otherinternational journals indexed in important databases, which correspond to the objectives of the ScientificDivisions of CENA/USP (Figure 11). CENA presents 1120 indexed documents in the SCOPUS database in the last 6years (2016-2021), making a total of 18,484 citations, establishing an average of 16.5 citations per indexeddocument in the year. In the WOS database, for the same period, CENA presents 797 indexed documents ( indiance h 28) with 15,321 citations and an average of 19 citations per indexed document. It can also be noted thatCENA receives a large number of Post-Doctoral Students each year, in 2021, there were 45 Post-Doctoral Students(39 in 2020), with ongoing projects. (AU)