Young Brazilian woman participates in the Biotechnology conference at Harvard and MIT

Letícia Marques, 22 years old, was selected to participate in the main biotechnology event in the world. GapSummit takes place between June 16th and 20th at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States. The summit takes place every year with the aim of stimulating topics such as: value chain in agriculture; plant pathogen diagnostics; prevention of diseases; between others. Experts on the subject and representatives of large companies and institutions in the sector will give lectures throughout the congress. 

To participate, the young woman went through a selection process that analyzed her professional career and the food reuse projects she develops in Brazil. Now selected, she will participate in the proposed activities that range from project development with the opportunity to win prizes, to lectures with sector experts. 

The main objective of the event is to solve the main challenges facing biotechnology today. The congress will subsidize the best projects, which should begin to be developed by the groups in February so that they can be presented in June. The only representative of the country at the event, Letícia hopes to contribute to advances in the sector: "It is an honor to represent Brazilian biotechnology, where we can do so much with so few resources. Furthermore, I am very happy that the GapSummit team trusts me to help redirect of this technology in the world".

The project that will be presented by the group that Leticia is part of, which aims to unite the agricultural value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa at various points, such as, for example, input supply, cultivation, storage and distribution. The plan is to start in Ethiopia and use the infrastructure of existing and consolidated distribution companies in Africa to assist in this process.

Previously, while she was still a Biotechnology student at the University of Brasília, Letícia was in doubt about which direction to take. The turning point in his life was participating in the Youth Ag Summit (YAS) in 2017. Designed by Bayer, this project brings together every two years one hundred young people from all over the world, aged between 18 and 25, to develop solutions and seek answers to one of society's most challenging questions: how to feed a hungry planet in a more sustainable way.

In 2019, Brazil will host the 4th edition of this meeting, which has already taken place in Canada, Australia and Belgium. More information on the event portal: http://www.youthagsummit.com.

Letícia is currently reaping the fruits of this participation: being a YAS Alumni gave her the spotlight on this opportunity at GapSummit. Furthermore, the young woman heads projects linked to food security at Sesi (Social Service for Industry) and Embrapa. "Participating in YAS helped me a lot to broaden my horizons and gave me direction on what I would really like to work on, which ended up being healthy eating, food technology and food safety."