Yale and USP announce recipients of the 2024 Strategic Partnerships Fund

Pictured at the launch of the Yale-USP Institutional Partnership Program are Yale’s Vice Provost for Global Strategy Steven Wilkinson and USP’s Vice Dean Maria Arminda Arruda do Nascimento.

Yale and the University of São Paulo (USP) have awarded five projects through the new 2024 Strategic Partnerships Fund, an initiative supporting research collaborations between the two institutions. Each project team includes a principal investigator from both universities who will work together to investigate topics ranging from global health to climate change.

In one project titled “Advancing Mental Health: A Collaborative Initiative to Address Schizo-Obsessive Disorder and Improve Community Well-Being in São Paulo,” researchers seek to expand mental health research in São Paulo. Led by Michael H. Bloch, professor in the Yale Child Study Center and Eurípedes Constantino Miguel, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at USP School of Medicine, this project aims to increase the understanding of the neurobiological conditions of schizo-obsessive disorder. Additionally, the project aims to collaborate with an NGO, Primeiros Laços, as an intervention in two Brazilian cities. Four researchers from USP — Jônatas Magalhães Santos, Igor Studart de Lucena Feitosa, Arthur Caye, and Marcelo Q. Hoexter — will join the project, along with James F. Leckman, Neison Harris Professor in the Child Study Center, and Angeli Landeros-Weisenberger from Yale.

Another project, “Collaborative tactics versus global fungal infection challenges amidst climate change,” seeks to harness the expertise of the research teams at USP’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto and the Yale School of Public Health. The labs of Gustavo H. Goldman of USP and Jeffrey P. Townsend, Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale at Yale, have independently researched the effects of disease development influenced by climate change. Now, with funding through the 2024 Strategic Partnerships Fund, the two teams will continue their efforts in a project that draws on their synergistic strengths to better understand the burden of fungal diseases on public health, specifically Aspergillus fumigates, a high-priority, invasive fungus that causes millions of infections. These two labs will work together to create strategies that address Aspergillus infection. In addition to the principal investigators, this project includes Zheng Wang and Jorge Alfaro-Murillo from Yale, along with Thaila Fernanda dos Reis of USP.

In partnership with Richard I.F. Trinidade of the USP Department of Geophysics and the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics, and Atmospheric Sciences, David Evans of Yale’s Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences will study the ancient supercontinent Rodinia in a project titled “Primordial Connections: Billion-year-old Geological Linkages Among Ancestral North and South America, and Central Africa.” Specifically, this project will focus on the sites of Laurentia in the Adirondack Mountains of America, the São Francisco Craton in Brazil, and the Congo Craton in Namibia. For nearly two years, the Yale and USP labs have collaborated and this project will expand on current understandings of not just the supercontinent Rodinia, but also global ice ages and mineral resource exploration. Thales Pescarini, a joint Ph.D. student at USP and Yale, will also work on this project, along with USP Ph.D. student Osvaldo Ndonga.

In a project titled “Enhancing Health and Safety Culture in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining: A Critical Pathway to Sustainable Mineral Supply for the Global Energy Transition,” Ana Carolina Russo, in USP’s Department of Mining and Petroleum Engineering at the Polytechnic School, and Michelle L. Bell, Mary E. Pinchot Professor at the Yale School of the Environment and Professor of Environmental Health, seek to generate a model for safe and sustainable mining practices. The extraction of critical minerals is an essential part of both local and global economies. For some communities, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) serves as the primary livelihood, and globally, critical minerals are fueling energy transitions. With interdisciplinary expertise in environmental engineering and public health, this project seeks to investigate and improve safety practices as well as understand the varied environmental impacts of ASM. Beyond Russo and Bell, Giorgio de Tome and Carlos Henrique from USP will join the project, along with Nicole Deziel, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

Joshua Gendron, associate professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and Carlos Takeshi Hotta, associate professor at the Biochemistry Department at USP, will expand on their past research in the project “Metabolic Regulation of Seasonal Growth in Plants.” Both labs seek to clarify the role of myo-inositol, a sugar, in seasonal plant physiology. As both labs have investigated myo-inositol and plant metabolism, this project will expand existing knowledge of the sugar’s interaction with plant growth. Two graduate students from USP’s Department of Biochemistry — Felipe Jesus and Monica Del Peloso — will join Man Wah Li, Yushi Xia, and Morgan Vanderwall from Yale.

These five projects highlight ongoing and new collaborations between the two universities as researchers seek to create globally relevant knowledge and solutions.