Theme 3
Sustainable development is a systemic concept that translates as a model of development that can meet the needs of the current generation, without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future ones. Sustainable development calls for a harmonious relationship between economic development, environmental preservation, quality of life and the rational use of natural resources. In this sense, the sustainable development of humanity includes a thorough understanding of biodiversity, which has been maximized by the development of new technologies.
Simultaneously, new technological advances arise from the demands resulting from research processes that lead to new findings associated with biodiversity and the reasonable use of natural resources. Hence, studies in this Theme address the ways in which new technologies can contribute to the progress in biodiversity and environmental studies, as well as the ways in which these technological advances can assist in the development of materials, products and processes that lead to the rational use of natural resources generating low impact on the environment. In this sense, our efforts will be undertaken in four major directions:
(a) Advances in genomics and its impacts on the study of biodiversity, with focus on the production of knowledge in genomic scale for the understanding of evolution and conservation of biodiversity, involving the conduction of studies of several species, in several levels according to how endangered they are. This Theme will also focus on the study of microorganisms to create new technologies and provide the sustainable use of natural resources;
(b) Technology, Energy and Natural Resources, new directions for sustainability, which seeks to explore the development of materials and processes, anchored in the rational use of natural resources, in the reduction of environmental impact and optimization of energy use;
(c) Extraction of knowledge from large masses of data, with focus on scalability and reliability of algorithms for processing data and the use of parallel computing techniques for real-time analysis, whose applications can generate important social and ecological impacts;
(d) Technological advances in an interconnected world, with focus on the development of protocols and methods for technologies to be used for the sustainable development of cities and environmental preservation. Studies in this Theme embrace researchers from five Graduate Programs of PUCRS in cooperation with highly prestigious Universities from several countries.
