Check out the voice of the Executive Director of the National Education and  Research Network, RNP (Brazil), and his vision about RedCLARA and collaboration. Read this and other interviews in the book “RedCLARA: Name, voice and instrument of collaboration in Latin America”.

What comes to your mind when you hear a researcher talking about collaboration?
On one occasion the vice-chancellor of an important university located in the Amazon basin told me that “he felt far from Brazil although close to the world”. The hard isolation created by thousands of kilometres and many hours by plane (or even more by boat) is still, in many senses, a barrier for normal relations between researchers, professors and students. But to talk about collaboration is to talk about the network and its applications.

What would you say is the most important aspect of research and education networks?
Apart from this coming together and inclusion of their communities, research networks play an extremely important role in people’s qualification and in the provision of various solutions which would not be possible in isolation – advanced services, R+D projects, experimentation of new models and testing of solutions. Along this road, some of the results obtained become the fuel and motivation for better public policies and innovation.

How would you describe the role of RedCLARA both at a regional and global level?
A high-performance network bringing together 14 Latin American countries is a possibility for effective collaboration that we did not have before 2003. To develop this collaboration space over the last ten years involved incorporating universities, supporting multinational research projects, providing new applications for distance collaboration and helping to strengthen the importance of science and education in the regional agenda.

What has been the key important aspect of the ALICE2 project for your network?
A very intelligent and visionary vision of inter-regional inclusion with concrete results. Through the creation of this cooperation project it was possible to lay the foundations and build on the new association opportunities in the academic and entrepreneurial fields. It is difficult to imagine how the same result could be accomplished in so little time without this strategic alliance with Europe.

How important is for RNP the collaboration with other national and regional networks and how do you collaborate globally?
For the Brazilian academic network, inclusion within Latin America is the answer to the expectations of many of our clients in relation to the development of the research they conduct. Projects in health, agriculture, biodiversity, mathematics, arts and humanities, among many other areas, depend on a daily basis on our capacity to offer better collaboration services and platforms. Many virtual organisations live on web conference applications, transference of large volumes of data or simply collaborative work spaces. We are living in an era of intense mobility and inclusion. We have the challenge of building a global, straightforward and secure environment which allows everyone to explore their potential and ideas together.

If RedCLARA did not exist, what would the science, research and innovation scenario in your country be like?
The value of a network depends directly on how many of us are part of them. We still have a lot to do to establish better and greater connections for education and research institutions. However, the challenge that was overcome with the implementation of RedCLARA is an effective demonstration of the capacity we have to build new solutions. It is certainly not easy for the institutions involved in the consolidation of this regional space to devote themselves to the huge national challenges and develop RedCLARA simultaneously. However, this is not about choosing. We cannot exist without this inclusion provided by CLARA and, I think there isn’t a sustainable development alternative for any country in Latin America which is not based on inclusion, cooperation and qualification through education, research and culture.

Could you describe your view of research and education networks in the future?
National research networks will be something completely different from what we have today, resulting mainly from the overcoming of the restrictions that still persist in our region, both in terms of their and quality of the physical infrastructure for communications, storage and computing, as well as in terms of the limitation of qualified people to run and use this environments. I think they will continue to be strategic organisations to put forward initiatives for global inclusion and collaboration. They will be much more oriented towards bringing people together and testing ideas and, even so, contributing to scale economies and innovation.

According to your point of view, what should be the role of RedCLARA over the next five years?
To reach its sustainability and maintain its high performance. To support the consolidation of its members, especially the younger national networks.