CNPq MAI/DAI — Academic Master's & Doctorate for Innovation (Mestrado e Doutorado Acadêmico para Inovação)
Funds industry-linked doctoral training in Brazil through joint academic and company supervision.
CNPq MAI/DAI, the Master's and Doctorate Academic Program for Innovation, places graduate students inside Brazilian companies while keeping them formally enrolled at a university. CNPq runs it with CAPES, and the model is built around dual supervision from an academic adviser and a company-side co-supervisor. The latest announced call allocated R$ 60.5 million for 960 fellowships across four modalities: doctoral, master's, postdoctoral, and undergraduate industrial initiation. A company and a Brazilian university must sign a formal partnership agreement before students can be placed, and the stipends follow CNPq's innovation fellowship tables rather than direct company payments. This is the right route when a firm wants embedded research capacity, but the project still needs academic governance and an enrolled student at the center. The program is most useful for companies with a concrete R&D problem, a willing university partner, and enough process discipline to manage a formal tripartite setup in Brazil.
Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.