A consortium of twelve European and Brazilian organizations has launched a new collaboration under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement nº 733531). CEBRABIC – the Centre for Europe-Brazil Business & Innovation Cooperation – aims at enhancing the cooperation in research, technology and entrepreneurship between the EU member states and Latin America’s leading economy, Brazil. The diverse project consortium will work together for four years to set up the CEBRABIC centre and is coordinated by Fraunhofer IPK, located in Berlin, Germany.

CEBRABIC will be a Centre working on a network basis. Creating synergies and complementarities is the core value of CEBRABIC, particularly with European research and innovation (R&I) structures located in Brazil, to complement, expand and enhance its service portfolio. Different types of stakeholder incorporation into CEBRABIC network is foreseen, either from the demand or supply service: members, service providers, regional innovation hubs and focal points.

CEBRABIC will be national wide network in Brazil, locally and regionally supported by 15 SENAI Innovation Centres – part of CNI structure, through the National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI) – as well as further partners acting as regional innovation hubs located in all Brazilian regions. Its headquarters and representation offices, working on behalf of CEBRABIC will be located in Brasília, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

The main target group of CEBRABIC are R&I&B organizations, comprising a wide range of specific type of stakeholders: universities, research centres (basic and applied), technology transfer entities, technology parks, business incubators, innovation agencies, funding agencies, business associations, chambers of commerce, clusters, industrial companies, SMEs and startups from all sectors, consultancy companies, risk capital investors, individual researchers, professors and entrepreneurs.