Alexandre Morais Do Amaral

I am currently in the division of research and development of Embrapa, the in-house agency for research and development of the Ministry of Agriculture of Brazil. I am in charge of studies on our portfolia of projects and programmes and how we can explore the most of them, in terms of new responses to the challenges of the Brazilian agriculture as well as how we can advance in terms of research management. My previous activities were related to the international agenda of Embrapa. In the international context, I have developed activities overseas as an Embrapa Labex researcher, at Rothamsted Research, in UK. In my return to Embrapa in Brazil, I became coordinator of international scientific cooperation, then head of the division on international relations and finally manager of strategic international relations. My main role was to provide support to the board of directors, general managers and heads of research centres on international issues as well as to foster collaborative initiatives between Embrapa and its overseas partners. As a visiting scientist in the so called Embrapa Labex initiative (a unique international programme that Embrapa has launched for international collaborative research in cutting-edge science topics), in Harpenden - UK, at Rothamsted Research, my two main tasks were: A) to develop a common interest project on molecular plant-microbe interactions at Rothamsted Research and B) to foster collaborative studies between Embrapa and UK and other European research institutions. My background is on genomics of microbes. My PhD was completed during at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and UFLA (Brazil) regarding plant responses to biotic stress and transformation and was concluded in early 1999. In 2000, I concluded a post-doctoral position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-USA, in plant molecular biology. In 2002, I concluded a second post-doctoral position in the genomic analysis of bacterial plant pathogens at IAC (Brazil). Since 2002, I work with a permanent position as researcher at Embrapa. I used to be a fellow of CNPq (productivity fellowship) and a lecturer and adviser of the course entitled Genomic Analysis of Microorganisms, at graduate level at UNESP (São Paulo State University): Masters and PhD. (Fonte: Currículo Lattes)