São Paulo School of Advanced Science

The overarching goal of SPSAS-evo (São Paulo School of Advanced Science Evolution) was to provide opportunities for close interaction among students and leading experts conducting cutting edge research in evolution, as well as to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion about hot topics in evolutionary biology.

A historical discipline by definition, evolutionary biology nevertheless relies both on experimental evidence and historical inference to address phenomena that occur in time scales ranging from a few days to billions of years. Interdisciplinary par excellence, its conceptual breakthroughs will most likely occur when experts from different areas are brought together with the goal of exchanging and synthesizing knowledge.

The school had nine days involving practical directed studies classes, round tables, exhibition of research lines in development in the State of São Paulo, group work to produce proposals for scientific articles and conceptual web pages, discussion of its projects with teachers and speakers, and two days with visits monitored the plant examples of research of the State of São Paulo.

There were three main thematic axes, synergistic, "Microevolution", "Macroevolution" and "Integrated Approaches". There will be 15 teachers (9 foreign institutions and national institutions 6) and 9 speakers (all in the State of São Paulo).

The school offered 60 positions being at least 30 of these for foreign students from the undergraduate to post-doctoral fellows. Our expectation is to promote future collaborations between students of the school and its faculty, attract young talent from the area for studies in the State of São Paulo and lead to a better level of studies and publications of all involved at the School.