Q. How do you look at the role of third world academy in the growth and development of Science and Technology in the developing countries? 

A. I think it is very important. The role of the academy is each time getting more important. Of course this was all a vision of Abdul Salaam twenty years ago, but we have now attained maturity. We can say that we are now much more visible in developing countries, and sort of an important voice for Science and Technology in our part of the world. How comprehensive is this achievement? On one hand is the concern about the concept of application of science in the benefit to the societyon the other hand at the same time trying to reach out to even the least developed countries. So we are embracing quite a vast range of activities making it altogether very comprehensive. So I am very optimistic that it already is an important role and will be much more so in the coming years. 

Q. What is the status of S&T development especially in the scientific institutions in Brazil?

 A. I believe strongly that Brazil, India and China are natural partners. In that sense, they achieve a degree of development, particularly in Science and Technology. This may be well, actively speaking, higher above the countries of developing world and so these three countries, particularly Brazil came quite a way in progressing. But on one hand we have much more to go, while on the other together with India and China. I think time has come to share responsibilities for upgrading S&T also in our regions. So we must collaborate with our neighbours and across the continents so that we become donors. And also as I said we should share our facilities with our fellow scientists in other developing countriesour laboratories, our fellowships should be made available for them to get higher degrees, to become scientists. So again I am very optimistic that we may be reaching in new phases of development in some countries like the ones mentioned. We should also be collaborating things strongly like donors with others. At the same time we will serve as links between developed world and other countries that are less fortunate. I think we are may be the right bridge because of our cultural links. We have similar problems that we have now and have had in the past and also similar kind of development.

 Q. How many centers of excellence do you have in Brazil?

A. Like India, we have quite many by now. But still I would say not enough. May be we have added to this list something like 20 centres of excellence, maybe 25. But even in our country they are not enough. For instance, in Brazil there are regions that need more centers of excellence like north eastern, north, central, westso there is an imbalance in Brazil in terms of economical development, but it is not just a coincidence, but almost a natural occurrence.  Also, certain regions are less developed scientifically. So what we are planning in Brazil is to target centers in these regions. Then we are very supportive of them, very friendly to them. We call them centers in development. So again certain spots, certain regions like one in Sao Polo and Rio De Janeiro in what we call South East of Brazil, the level of development has been quite remarkable, but not in other big regions of the country.

 Q. Do you have a strong Science Education System?

A. I think it is a problem for a whole worldeven the developed world. You know science in the past was somehow very attractive, so although we never had a strong system of science education but still science was intellectually very attractive. Perhaps people were less concerned about earning a lot of money. So many young talents would just go to science because they would read a nice book and see the wonders one can do with human intellect. Now we do not have a good science education system but as the others we have been making substantial efforts in that direction. It will take some time but not so long. In perhaps five years or so we can change some of the landscape for instance now we are taking care of giving cost to the teachers of secondary school. For primary school teachers there were some target actions on that, including the use of video conference in a mixed way. Some of these courses have instructors at all ends of this network. It is for the time being like pilot experience.  We are doing like India probably and China, certainly, giving a lot of attention to Olympiads as the fusion of science, particularly mathematics because that stands to mature you. In several levels and stages and in first stage the idea is to provide a diffusion of science and to be very friendly and then in different stage we become more selective. We then reach out for talents. This has been again very successful. This is very hard but we have to face it to improve the formations of teachers at our universities. So I think these first two sets of activities I mentioned to you are in place. I would say it is a good start in some case even more than that. The third target is universities themselves the teachers are formed. We have to go a long way in that direction that some success but still very much in sight. This is where I think lies the biggest challenge for all of us.

 Q. You are a mathematician, what has been your field of work?

 A. I do dynamical system. It is now very popular, what is called as Chaotic systems. You know, in my field the idea is to is to model a process after nature. Some people are also doing it for social science. In this, you repeat the same process many times. They want to see in the horizon what would be the behavior after certain number of repetitions of this process. So we look at the horizon and the interesting fact that we have discovered not so long ago in the last few decades is that most of these systems or models have the degree of uncertainty in the answer, so we have to get used to the fact that many phenomena in life are uncertain. This can be used for heart attacks, weather predictions and many other situations. One example is that even at a long range it seems that solar system is not stable so Pluto may go astray, but it will take several million years or so, so we are on the safe side. This is very fascinating and I love what I do. This is an interesting point and I am very happy and proud of what I have contributed to large schools in Brazil and Latin America the best in most of the world. So this is one more example that we can be really as good as scientists of any country.  

*Interviewed by Biman Basu - Courtesy Gyandarshan