A course in disruptive innovation helped to cement João Paulo Longo’s science-entrepreneur ambitions.Credit: Victor Carlos Mello Da Silva
While earning his dentistry degree at the University of Brasilia, João Paulo Longo joined Brazil’s Institutional Scientific Initiation Scholarship Programme (PIBIC), which gives undergraduates the opportunity to join research projects. The experience ignited a passion for research that led him to quit dentistry and pursue a PhD, during which a cosmetics company director sought his help in product development.
These early career experiences, alongside a course on disruptive innovation at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts, cemented his ambition to be a science entrepreneur.
Longo is now a nanotechnology researcher at the University of Brasilia, a role he combines with his position as a founder and researcher at Glia Innovation, a cosmetics business in Goiânia.
You pivoted from dentistry to nanotechnology. How and why did that happen?
I worked as a dentist for three years after graduating, but my earlier involvement in the PIBIC, which I took part in in as an undergraduate in 2003, inspired me to start a research career and to undertake both a master’s and a PhD.
My doctoral research was on the application of a photodynamic therapy — a drug activated by light — to treat oral infection in a 12-participant clinical study. It gave me an understanding of how to use basic science to solve practical problems. At that time, translational medicine, the practice of taking scientific discoveries from the laboratory to clinical settings to benefit human health, was not widespread in Brazil.
What led you to combine academia and entrepreneurship?
In 2010, two years into my PhD programme, I was invited by Leila Velez, a founder of Beleza Natural, a cosmetics company in Rio de Janeiro, to develop nanotechnology products, including nanostructured oils developed from biodiverse sources in Brazil. I was recommended by a friend working at the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry in Brasilia. It was an improbable relationship because, at that time, my field was nanotechnology and dentistry. We adapted some technologies for the cosmetics field.
Five years on, I was in an academic role, teaching nanobiotechnology at the University of Brasilia and feeling unfulfilled in my career. Eureka moments were rare, as were opportunities to apply scientific knowledge to solve real-world problems. I felt that academia had grown increasingly competitive: success was tied to metrics, rather than to the practical application of knowledge, and researchers were judged mainly on publication numbers.
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