The social scientist Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques is a fellow researcher at CEM and professor livre-docente at the Political Science Department of the University of São Paulo and has been director of CEM through 2004-2009.

The INCT for Metropolitan Studies mission is to analyze the main mechanisms that explain the social conditions in the city, especially the reproduction of poverty and social inequality, understanding it as the combined result of three dimensions, in terms of which structure the three lines of research of the institute:

1. Economic dynamics and in particular the opportunities created in the labor market
2. State action and political institutions, central to the understanding of access to social services and mechanisms for the expression of interest;
3. The different modes of socialibity and its impact on the experience of urban life and the opportunities to overcome poverty.

The National Institutes of Science and Technology Program (INCT), launched in July 2008, has become a powerful tool for promoting science, technology and innovation in the country. With 122 approved projects in different research areas, such as health, biotechnology, nanotechnology and energy, the Program aims to mobilize and aggregate in networks the best research groups in frontier areas of science and in strategic areas for the sustainable development of the country, as described in PACTI.