Prof. Denise Pires de Carvalho of Brazil has been appointed as Assistant Director-General for Sciences. The Director-General of UNESCO, Khaled El-Enany, has recently nominated Denise representing a major strengthening of the leadership at UNESCO from a scientific perspective.
Denise will be a member of the Senior Management Team of UNESCO, working with the Director-General of the Organization and making contributions to its enhanced leadership in the global science community. Her mandate will be that of international research cooperation, open science, knowledge transfer, and cooperation between scientific communities.
Key Highlights:
- Denise Pires de Carvalho brings extensive academic & scientific leadership to UNESCO as Sciences ADG
- She has led UFRJ, CAPES and Brazil’s higher education policy
- Her role strengthens UNESCO’s global science and open science agenda
Denise is a full professor from 2011 at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), involved with teaching of physiology and leading the research activities through being a Principal Investigator of the Endocrine Physiology Laboratory. Her educational profile offers an impressive scientific research background demonstrated in about 190 papers. Her experience based on teaching, research, and conducting scientific research has made her an experienced member of Brazilian academia and scientific community.
Focusing on her educational profile, she has an academic background in physiology, higher education management, science policies, and scientific research management, gaining a lot of experience in handling scientific research projects and creating scientific partnerships at the international level. She will assist UNESCO in its scientific strategies using her experience in institutional cooperation and scientific projects, which relate research and innovations to education and sustainable development.
She holds a Doctor of Science in Physiology and Pathophysiology, attained from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1994 and a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences in Biophysics attained in 1989. Denise got her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1987.
Denise is a key player in numerous leadership roles in the field of higher education, research management, and collaboration in science. Since July 2025, Denise holds the position of President of the Scientific Council of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) in Marseille, and deals with strategy in scientific research and international cooperation in sustainable development.
Apart from that, she has served as the President of CAPES (Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education) since February 2024, located within the Ministry of Education, where she is engaged in the development of graduate education and research evaluation strategy and acts as an important member of the academic and scientific community of Brazil.
Denise was appointed as Rector of UFRJ in 2019 and remained in that role until 2023, being the first woman elected as Rector of this prestigious institution. Under her leadership, she gave strategic guidance to one of the most important universities of Brazil concerning educational, research, and academic matters.
For nearly a decade, Denise held several important academic and scientific positions such as Reviewer of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research and President of the Latin American Thyroid Society situated in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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