The Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) was founded in 1968, in the city of São Carlos, in the Central Eastern region of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Since 2011, São Carlos has been officially considered the Brazilian National Capital of Technology, due to its high ratio of doctors per resident: 1:180, while the rest of the country averages 1:5,423. Until 2006, UFSCar was the first and only federal public university in the countryside of the state.

Two years after its foundation, it received the first 96 students, for the undergraduate majors in Sciences – now discontinued – and in Materials Engineering, the first major on this field in Latin America. In that decade, the first three academic centers of the university were instituted: Center of Exact Sciences and Technology, Center of Biological and Health Sciences and Center of Education and Human Sciences.

As the years went by, new departments, undergraduate majors, graduate programs and academic centers were created. All of them have developed activities on teaching-learning, research and public outreach – socially-engaged activities developed and carried out by scholars in order to benefit the external community with the knowledge produced within the university.

The second campus of UFSCar was established in 1991, in the city of Araras, in the Eastern region of state of São Paulo, as a result of the incorporation of regional units of the National Program of Sugar Cane Improvement, a bureau connected to the extinct Institute of Sugar and Alcohol – a Brazilian government agency which mission was guiding, stimulating and controlling the sugar and alcohol production throughout the national territory. The campus is devoted to Agricultural Sciences and features units also in the cities of Anhembi and Valparaiso, both in state of São Paulo. 

In 2006, UFSCar created its third campus, in the city of Sorocaba, approximately 85 km from the capital of state of São Paulo. The activities carried out in this campus, which is very comprehensive when it comes to the fields of knowledge operating there, are distinguished with the stamp of sustainability in its various aspects. 

Five years later, UFSCar implemented its fourth campus: Lagoa do Sino, a productive grain farm of 647 hectares in the city of Buri, in the Southwestern region of the state of São Paulo. The property was donated by Brazilian writer Raduan Nassar, with the condition that the university contributed, through its activities of teaching-learning, research and public outreach, to the economic and social development of the region, which features the state highest ranks of preservation of the native vegetation and is characterized by its reliance on family farming. The latest campus of UFSCar hosts graduate majors on Agronomic Engineering, Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Environmental Engineering and Food Engineering.

Currently, the university features eight academic centers, besides the three centers aforementioned: Center of Agricultural Sciences, Center of Humanities and Biological Sciences, Center of Nature Sciences, Center of Sciences and Technology for Sustainability and Center of Sciences on Management and Technology. About 95% of the institution’s whole faculty is composed of PhDs.