Peru Has Promise
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Peru spotlight CHRISTIAN VINCES/GETTY CHRISTIAN Universities in Peru’s capital, Lima, are collaborating with teams studying malaria in the Amazon. that information to divert mosquito-control teams to those areas before an epidemic hit. PERU HAS He knew satellite imagery wouldn’t be enough because the rainforest is predis- posed to cloud cover. So he sought help from PROMISE researchers at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, enlisted collaborators across the To compete globally, protect its natural resources United States and gained funding from the World Health Organization. With that sup- and move its economy forward, Peru will need to take port, he fitted out inexpensive drones with advantage of scientific opportunities in plain sight. the US$15,000 cameras he needed. He and his team then set out into the Ama- By Aleszu Bajak zon to collect data. But soon, like countless explorers who had trudged into the jungle before him, Carrasco-Escobar learnt that the n 2017, Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar started infected more than 64,000 Peruvians in 2014. elements always win in the end. “Eventually mapping mosquito breeding sites in the By mapping mosquito habitats, he could help the Amazon beats your technology. We lost Peruvian Amazon. The doctoral student the authorities to predict where malaria might a drone to the jungle. It felt like we had lost a at the University of California, San Diego, spread in the future, he says, “instead of being member of our field team,” he says, with the was hoping to collect data to be used to reactive and trying to control a malaria out- kind of nervous laugh that recognizes how Ifight malaria, a disease that is endemic in his break after it’s already been reported, like much money was lost. “It crashed into a tree home country of Peru. firefighters putting out a blaze”. and we couldn’t find it.” Carrasco-Escobar wanted to help pub- If Carrasco-Escobar and his team could get These challenges — doing remote field- lic-health authorities in the northeastern a view of the forest from above, they could work, guiding a constellation of collabora- region of Loreto, to be more proactive about identify bodies of water that might harbour tors, tracking down international funding, combating a mosquito-borne illness that mosquito larvae, he reasoned, and then use confronting a major logistical hurdle that Nature | Vol 576 | 19/26 December 2019 | S65 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. Peru spotlight slows the science down — are probably familiar Granada in Spain and founder of the Scimago 600 computers across campus to run his analy- to many scientists, especially those working Lab, which studies publishing output. sis. Without that high-throughput computing in Peru. And for most Peruvian researchers, “Only 20% of Peru’s international scientific system, which his university dubbed LEGION, the challenges are symptomatic of systemic collaborations are led by Peruvians,” says many of his projects wouldn’t have been pos- issues in which scientific bureaucracies, a lack de Moya Anegón, who analysed how many sible, he admits. of government support and an outdated edu- Peruvian scientists are corresponding authors “If it wasn’t for [the PCUP], we wouldn’t cation system seem to have combined to make on studies that took place in Peru. “This creates be collaborating with CERN or with Fermi- science difficult to undertake. a dependency on outside science and a low lab,” says Gago, who estimates he’s received That’s lamentable, researchers say, because amount of leadership from Peruvian science.” $70,000 from the university for research of how much the country has to offer science But Alberto Gago, a high-energy particle assistants since 2002. “The strong investment — Peru supports research into tropical glaciers physicist originally from Peru who collab- has been from the university as well as inter- in the high Andes, ecosystems fed by the orates with teams at Fermilab, in Batavia, national funds. But this shouldn’t just come Humboldt Current in the Pacific Ocean, child- Illinois, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- from your institution. It should come from hood development and infectious diseases and nology, in Cambridge and CERN, Europe’s the state.” theoretical physics, among myriad other fields. particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Swit- That’s a common refrain among scientists in To ensure they have a role in their country’s zerland, says pulling in international partners Peru. There is little investment from the gov- development, Peruvian researchers will have is essential to building a career as a Peruvian ernment into science — the country invests to be creative about taking advantage of the only 0.12% of its gross domestic product into scientific opportunities Peru has to offer. “Fundamentally, we are science and technology, compared with 0.36% “There’s enormous potential in Peruvian in Chile, 1.27% in Brazil and 2.8% in the United scientists,” says Gisella Orjeda, the former an exporter of scientists States (see ‘By the numbers’). This lack of sup- president of CONCYTEC, Peru’s National to the world.” port for learning and undertaking science in Council of Science, Technology and Tech- the country has led to an exodus of researchers. nological Innovation — if only they can work “Latin America has great researchers but, out how to harness the opportunities in plain scientist. “You have limitations if you’re alone,” fundamentally, we are an exporter of scientists sight. he says. “You’re limited in the number of things to the world,” says Orjeda. “I can’t explain how you can study.” it’s possible that Peru has always abandoned Global collaboration He credits his graduate work at Fermilab and science.” In 2018, Peru ranked seventh in Latin America Brazil’s University of São Paulo for affording in terms of the number of papers it published, him the right mix of theory and experimen- Education reform and it is heavily reliant on international col- tation to keep him plugged into world-class In 2012, when Orjeda first took the helm of laboration, as Carrasco-Escobar’s malaria particle physics from South America. “If I CONCYTEC, her budget was only $5 million. study exemplifies. Roughly two-thirds of didn’t have that profile, Peru wouldn’t be able Divided over the whole country, that’s almost scientific studies published from Peru since to have a seat at the table.” nothing, she says. “There was no budget, no 2003 listed foreign collaborators, according Gago also praises his institution, the vision, no tools to close the gaps of science in to data from the research-outputs database Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PCUP) Peru.” Over her five-year tenure, the agency’s Dimensions.ai (Dimensions is part of Digital in Lima, for facilitating those collaborations funding grew almost eight-fold and was used Science, a firm operated by the Holtzbrinck by financially supporting his research group to fund local research, create scholarships for Publishing Group, which has a share in Nature’s rather than letting it run exclusively on grant Peruvians to do graduate work at the world’s publisher, Springer Nature). That’s in line with funding — an arrangement that Gago says is rare top universities and establish a repatriation the calculations of Félix de Moya Anegón, a in Peru. The PCUP also built him a distributed programme to entice them to return. bibliometrics researcher at the University of computer system that mines idle time on up to But by 2017, Orjeda realized that Peru BY THE NUMBERS Peru’s scientific output is small compared with larger countries in South and Central America, but is increasing rapidly. Money matters Leading the way The research and development (R&D) budgets of countries in South and Central America vary Peru’s scientific output has increased greatly since 2004 — and the hugely, but some punch above their weight when it comes to scientific output. share of research led by a Peruvian scientist has also crept upwards. Studies published in 2016 R&D spending (US$) Corresponding author: Peruvian Non-Peruvian Brazil 2004 Mexico 2006 Argentina 2008 Chile 2010 Colombia 2012 Cuba Costa Rica 2014 Peru 2016 Uruguay 2018 80 60 40 20 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 Published papers (thousands) R&D spending (US$, billions) Studies published BANK; SCIMAGO/WORLD MATTERS: MONEY SOURCES: ANEGÓN FÉLIX DE MOYA LEADING THE WAY: S66 | Nature | Vol 576 | 19/26 December 2019 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. stakeholders and drafting legislative propos- als informed by science, Majluf was able to help the government to set catch limits on the fish — which is exported as fishmeal for livestock feed to countries such as China, generating more than $1.5 billion in 2018. She also helped it to pass a 2013 resolution urging Peruvians to eat the anchoveta. With the help of Peruvian celebrity chef Gastón Acurio, the country began transform- ing that supply chain and reducing the impact on fish stocks. “As soon as they saw there was a real market for it, people started investing in factories and infrastructure to process ancho- veta,” Majluf recalls. “Within a few years, you’d go to the supermarket and all you could see was anchoveta.” Times have changed since, however, and those market-based mechanisms to encourage Peruvians to eat the fish have gone backwards owing to political disagreements over who has the right to catch them. Today, most anchoveta are again exported rather than eaten in Peru. Research potential Other efforts to bridge science and politics Researchers capture mosquitos as part of their studies of malaria in Peru.