Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo, or FAPESP) is a public foundation

Foundation (charity)

A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....

 located in São Paulo, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, with the aim of providing grants, funds and programs to support research, education and innovation of private and public institutions and companies in the state of São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

. It was founded in 1962 and is maintained by endowments by the State government which are guaranteed as a fixed percentage of the State's tax income, besides the income generated by the financial fruition of its considerable assets.

FAPESP has been and still is an extremely important institution for Brazilian science. More recently its investment on directed and priority projects, such as genomic science and industrial innovation, has resulted in a big international visibility for Brazilian science and technology. It has also supported the strong use of digital information technologies in São Paulo, such as the Academic Network of São Paulo (ANSP), which is the academic Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 provider in the state, SciElo

SciElo

SciELO is a bibliographic database and a model for cooperative electronic publishing in developing countries originally from Brazil, supported by the Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo and the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development SciELO (Scientific...

, one of the largest projects of scientific digital libraries

Digital library

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...

 in the world, and a pioneering network of virtual research institutes. The academic network of São Paulo is currently being upgraded to be one of the fastest in the world (TIDIA), using optical networking technologies.

FAPESP has also been lately active in the popularization of science. It publishes a science magazine, Pesquisa FAPESP, which has been awarded the José Reis Award for the Divulgation of Science by the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

External links

• FAPESP Official Website. In English.
• Pesquisa FAPESP Magazine Website. In English.