The Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the Gran Sasso Tech Foundation – GST of L’Aquila have signed a cooperation agreement to develop joint research projects, organize and promote courses, conferences and symposia, and exchange information and academic publications.
Fernando Ferroni, President of GST, stated: “We are very pleased to sign this Agreement with the University of Minas Gerais. For the Gran Sasso Tech Foundation, which is already active in international cooperation with a particular focus on space technologies, this is an important step towards an increasingly fruitful relationship with Latin American countries with which we are building a lively and close dialogue both in the field of research and education. Proof of this is the high number of South Americans attending our Spaceraise School, organized in L’Aquila in May, coming from national space agencies, companies and universities, including UFMG. GST is a natural candidate to play a leading role in supporting universities and research centers in the development of cost-effective space science missions also thanks to the possibility of offering – without payment of royalties – the 2-MF/NIMBUS satellite architecture as an open hardware platform for encouraging shared innovations by research centers.”
Maria Cecilia Pereira, Professor at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais said, “I am really glad to celebrate this partnership between UFMG and Gran Sasso Tech. As a university that offers an Aerospace Engineering program and intends to advance in this field, it is very important for us to collaborate with institutions in the space sector that are at the forefront and have important industrial relationships. We believe this Agreement can ensure that we both grow by sharing some of each other’s strengths: for example, in the case of UFMG, aircraft design and manufacturing. Indeed, we have efficient laboratories and solid infrastructure – such as the Center for Aerospace Studies where we build aircrafts. In addition, I believe that our real strength lays in our people: our students are very dedicated and hardworking, our professors have solid backgrounds, and everyone is enthusiastic about contributing to this collaboration, both technically and scientifically. The opportunity to connect with researchers, students and companies through GST is very stimulating and makes our work even richer and more dynamic.”