Creativity, interdisciplinarity and communication mark the week
Students took part in project presentations, seminars and workshops
Several academic activities marked the week of the students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics of Technology and Innovation. On Tuesday (19), the 2026 graduates presented a preview of the work of the Xenolinguistics Project, carried out by Professor Cilene Rodrigues. At the end of the day, UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) professor Paulo Maia was the guest at the scientific seminar, which brought together young people from the three classes. On Thursday (21), the NCE (Careers and Internships Center) held a workshop on effective communication. Check out the program.
The Xenolinguistics Project often surprises freshmen who arrive at IMPA Tech. Carried out in the first semester of the degree, the activity consists of creating a hypothetical language, with syntax similar to that of human languages, as a way of developing grammar learning tools. “Creating a new language was one of the last things I expected on a math course, but it was a very pleasant surprise,” said student Davi Rodrigues.
The project is part of the Language Skills subject, which approaches language as a cognitive and combinatorial system. “The work makes the understanding of linguistic structures be learned in a very natural way, stimulating a lot of creativity in the process. Faced with such unusual problems, such as creating a new language, interdisciplinarity serves to provide us with different perspectives on the same problem, which, when added together, facilitate an interpretation of what is happening and enable a more effective solution to the challenges presented,” added Rodrigues.
Students are encouraged to use concepts and applications from different areas of knowledge, such as Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Linguistics, Astronomy and Mathematics. At the end of the semester, the projects will be presented again, already incorporating the adjustments suggested in the evaluation of this stage.
After the presentations, the scientific seminar continued the academic program on Tuesday. Paulo Maia, a full professor at the UFRJ Institute of Physics (IF-UFRJ), was the speaker invited by Professor Uéverton Souza, the organizer of the meetings. Maia presented the applications of optical forces on different size scales, exploring the frontiers of the research area through the applications conducted by the UFRJ Optical Tweezers Laboratory.
Optical forces are the mechanical effects that light exerts on matter by transferring the momentum of its photons. “The topic was very interesting. Seeing how light, which is always present around us, can have applications in contexts ranging from solar sailboats to cell biology, in such a comprehensive way, is fascinating,” said student David Farina.
Professor Maia also teaches courses at IMPA Tech, thanks to the academic partnership between the institution and IF-UFRJ. The collaboration between the universities also enables student mobility and student access to laboratories, courses and tutoring.
“It was really cool because we could see theoretical applications of physics in practice. This area of optical tweezers has direct contributions to biology, ranging from analyzing drugs in cells to analyzing the structure of these cells. It’s quite complex, but very interesting,” said student Anderson Aquiles.
Closing the week’s program, the NCE held a workshop on effective and assertive communication on Thursday (21). Aimed mainly at students in class 2026, the meeting is part of the soft skills training track. Psychologist Bruno Malaquias was the guest speaker. “With the rise of technology and information technology, today we need a global professional. The demands are not restricted to technical competence, which is why we need to develop hard and soft skills,” he said.
The meeting covered different dimensions of communication, going beyond orality, such as body language and non-verbal interaction. Malaquias also shared guidelines for speaking more assertively in public, highlighting strategies for capturing the listener’s attention before transmitting important information, as well as good practices in communicating via text messages and emails, especially in the context of the job market.
