Structural changes to aid science in developing countries

Terrones, Mauricio

doi:10.1038/464486c

Correspondence
Published: 24 March 2010

Structural changes to aid science in developing countries

Mauricio Terrones¹

Nature volume 464, page 486 (2010)Cite this article

726 Accesses
5 Altmetric
Metrics details

Subjects

Access through your institution

Buy or subscribe

I am quoted in a News story as saying that I wouldn't work in a developing nation again, after having been forced to leave my laboratory at the federal Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of San Luis Potosí in Mexico (Nature 464, 148–149; 2010). Because I have many valued friends and collaborators in developing countries, I would like to clarify this statement, in case it should cause offence.

My brother and I returned to Mexico after doing our doctorates and postdoctoral work abroad, with a view to establishing a first-class laboratory. We showed unequivocally that working in a developing nation is no bar to doing excellent science. Our students from Mexico's first graduate programme in nanotechnology have excelled. Our key strategy was to work as a team with an innovative horizontal philosophy that involved people from different areas of research in various countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

Purchase on SpringerLink
Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de Materiales e Ingeniería Química, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Spain
Mauricio Terrones

Authors

Mauricio Terrones
View author publications
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Contributions may be submitted to correspondence@nature.com.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Terrones, M. Structural changes to aid science in developing countries. Nature 464, 486 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464486c

Download citation

Published: 24 March 2010
Issue date: 25 March 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/464486c

Comments

Commenting on this article is now closed.

pedro duran 1 April 2010, 23:57

There are indeed first-class laboratories in IPICyT! This is so because there was a substantial financial effort from CONACyT immediately after 2000 for the infrastructure of this newly created CONACyT research center in San Luis Potosi. There was also at least one `Millenium project' from CONACyT with which part of the original equipment of the Advanced Materials Division (AMD) has been bought. In addition, some of the members of AMD contributed to the acquired equipment with parts of their own projects!
Several years later, CONACyT and the state of San Luis Potosi heavily financed the AMD with a so-called national laboratory project, aiming to buy more equipment. The deal was that if CONACyT would give half the money the government of the state would give the other half. The same happened with two other projects of the same type located at other divisions or dependencies of IPICyT. All the three projects have been approved, although San Luis Potosi is a relatively poor state in Mexico. So, there was a serious financial undertaking from the Mexican governments (both federal and local) to promote modern materials research and nanosciences in San Luis Potosi. At the present time, a good number of experimental researchers in DMA are performing their experiments using those equipments.