The dynamics of Brazilian protozoology over the past century

Abstract

Brazilian scientists have been contributing to the protozoology field for more than 100 years with important discoveries of new species such asTrypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp. In this work, we used a Brazilian thesis database (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) covering the period from 1987-2011 to identify researchers who contributed substantially to protozoology. We selected 248 advisors by filtering to obtain researchers who supervised at least 10 theses. Based on a computational analysis of the thesis databases, we found students who were supervised by these scientists. A computational procedure was developed to determine the advisors’ scientific ancestors using the Lattes Platform. These analyses provided a list of 1,997 researchers who were inspected through Lattes CV examination and allowed the identification of the pioneers of Brazilian protozoology. Moreover, we investigated the areas in which researchers who earned PhDs in protozoology are now working. We found that 68.4% of them are still in protozoology, while 16.7% have migrated to other fields. We observed that support for protozoology by national or international agencies is clearly correlated with the increase of scientists in the field. Finally, we described the academic genealogy of Brazilian protozoology by formalising the “forest” of Brazilian scientists involved in the study of protozoa and their vectors over the past century.

A view of the academic family trees in Brazil

“…Another interesting result is the fact that it was identified that within the period of relationship, the student may be benefited to the effect that he may have a higher number of publications when the period of relationship between him and the adviser is higher. Elias, Floeter-Winter and Mena-Chalco (2016) used Lattes Platform's data to identify genealogical graphs of researchers respected in Brazil in a certain area of knowledge. In this study, the data were collected in a semi-automatic way.…”

Genealogia acadêmica e sua relação com a trajetória do conhecimento na Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

“…No Brasil, a Plataforma Acácia (2018) utiliza os dados da Plataforma Lattes para construir grafos de genealogia acadêmica das orientações de pós-graduação stricto sensu (Damaceno;Rossi;Mena-Chalco, 2017). Alguns exemplos de genealogias acadêmicas construídas no Brasil são a genealogia honorífica do Professor Etelvino Bechara, do Instituto de Química (IQ) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP) (Mena-Chalco, 2015) e a genealogia histórica da área de Protozoologia (Elias;Floeter-Winter;.…”

Genealogia acadêmica dos doutores atuantes em matemática: um mapeamento macro na ciência brasileira

“…Identificar os acadêmicos que, historicamente, formaram a comunidade do Protozoologistasé o objetivo no trabalho de Elias et al [3]. Este mapeamento descreve desde os fundadores até os mais recentes acadêmicos destaárea do conhecimento.…”