Roberto Ferreira de Novais
Professor Novais receives national merit award in Soil Science
The professor at the Department of Soils at UFV and editor-in-chief of RBCS – Revista Brasileira de Ciência do Solo – Roberto Ferreira de Novais, was awarded the Antonio Carlos Muniz Prize for Soil Science 2011. The award was granted by the Brazilian Society of Science of Soil during the: XXXIII Brazilian Soil Science Congress, held in Uberlândia in August 2011. The award is given to people who contribute in an extraordinary way to the advancement of Soil Science in Brazil.
Professor Roberto Ferreira de Novais was nominated by the Soil Department of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul to receive the award. The Brazilian Society of Soil Science has been headquartered at UFV since 1997. In addition to being editor-in-chief of RBCS, the professor is also the mentor of seven editions of Topics in Soil Science and four textbooks on soil science that are used in all agricultural science courses in the country.
The award, according to correspondence sent to the recipient, recognizes and thanks him for his commitment as a professor in the Department of Soils at the Federal University of Viçosa for more than 40 years. The SBCS letter also says that: “We believe that we are also the spokespersons for the hundreds of researchers and agronomists who currently work throughout Brazil and of whom he was a teacher and advisor. His notable contributions to soil fertility studies make him a reference in Brazilian research. His brilliant scientific production and academic career would already make him worthy of the award, but his dedication and enthusiasm at the helm of RBCS make him even more deserving of the award that should honor people who are ahead of their time. We recognize that his scientific merits were decisive for the headquarters of SBCS to migrate from Campinas to Viçosa in 1997 and his firm and competent performance at the head of RBCS was and is decisive for this Scientific Journal to achieve the prestige it has today. We also highlight his commitment and enthusiasm in conducting the editorial production of SBCS, notably in encouraging the production of textbooks and Topics in Soil Science that disseminate and contribute to the advancement of soil science in Brazil”.
Roberto Ferreira de Novais is the author and co-author of 260 scientific articles in national and foreign journals with an editorial board, he was supervisor of more than 50 master’s and doctoral theses or dissertations, author of books and book chapters and Level 1A Researcher at CNPq , as well as deserving of several awards and honors. He officially retired this year, when he turned 70, but continues to work as a volunteer professor at UFV and editor-in-chief of RBCS.
In his speech, Professor Novais thanked UFRGS for being nominated and credited the award to the initiatives to publish specialized books by SBCS. For him, Society must always renew itself by keeping up with new demands. He was concerned about the difficulties of interaction between research and extension. “We need to get closer to the users of our research. Researchers are more concerned with solving problems with the number of articles published or impact factors than with observing the demands of the productive sector in Brazil. We have to reverse this order so as not to become outdated and this is the challenge for the new generations that are arriving”, said the professor.
