Dr Valeria Arza, member of the STRINGS project, participated at the session “The significance of international research cooperation for the attainment of the SDGs – approaches from research management”, within the ScienceSummit@UNGA76 around the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA76), held on 27th September 2021 and was organised by the German DLR from Germany.

In the session, Dr Arza talked about her research on Chagas within STRINGS project, whose goal is to map Science Technology and Innovation (STI) for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on Lower and Medium Income Countries (LMIC).

Focusing on Chagas, Dr Arza said that there are needs related to SDG 3, 16, 11 and 4, and highlighted that there are mismatches with science production, mostly concentrated in SDG 3, 15 and 11 and that research collaboration was found to be key. The requirements are:

  1. Interdisciplinarity, to create bridges between production of science mostly in biology and medicine and the needs in education and governance.
  2. Transdisciplinarity, to better understand Chagas complexity by promoting participation of stakeholders with different experience about the problem
  3. International collaboration, particularly when collaboration involves partners from countries where the disease is endemic, possibly because they have more contextual experience of what is needed.