Retrospective 2024: inspiring trajectories motivate undergraduates
Remember the meetings with special guests at IMPA Tech
26/12/2024
From the first day of classes, the students approved for the first IMPA Tech class had a taste of the special encounters that the degree would provide in 2024. Welcomed by an Inaugural Magna Lecture with important people from the technology job market, the students were encouraged and motivated by those who already have experience with innovation. Throughout the year, inspiration also came from discussions with renowned guests from different fields.
Inaugural Lecture – April/2024
André Street, co-founder of Stone, and Auana Mattar, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of TIM, welcomed IMPA Tech students on their first visit to IMPA’s headquarters, which they both called the “Mecca of Mathematics”. The speakers highlighted the fundamental importance of the discipline in developing the country and the importance of creating a bachelor’s degree to train new professionals.
“Today marks the start of one of the most powerful things there is: compound interest. We’re starting to compound interest on an initiative created back in the day. IMPA Tech will have an effect for each of you, for your family, for society and for the country,” said Street, making an association with the multiplication of interest.
Auana motivated the students and said: “Brazil is a country with a technological vocation, with many problems to be solved and there aren’t many places in the world as interesting as here. Rio de Janeiro is a breeding ground for this. You are in the ‘Mecca of Mathematics’. It’s a mini-pole for problem solving. Everything that is built here we can expand to the whole country.”
Chat with Artur Avila – August/2024
IMPA researcher extraordinaire and professor at the University of Zurich, Artur Avila, welcomed IMPA Tech students to kick off the academic activities of the second term of the degree in Mathematics of Technology and Innovation. The Fields Medal winner, known as the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, showed how students can begin to interact with the subject at a more advanced level, based on personal and academic events in his career.
Marcelo Viana, director-general of IMPA, took part in the meeting and explained to the students the importance of Fields for Brazilian mathematics. Viana taught Avila during his master’s degree and the two share the same area of research, dynamic systems.
Student Taina Queiroz found the meeting motivating. “Seeing a person of Avila’s stature, who graduated from IMPA, gives us a very good insight into IMPA Tech. We’re graduating from an institution that trained a Fields Medal winner,” she said.
Conversation with the Consul General of Portugal in Rio – September/2024
The Consul General of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro, Ambassador Gabriela Soares de Albergaria, spoke to the students in the auditorium of Porto Maravalley. In a round table discussion, the Consul addressed diplomatic practices to teach the students how to deal with formal situations of discussion and problem solving, especially from a collective perspective.
The chat was led by undergraduate students, who raised topics to understand the roles played by the diplomatic corps in representing a country and to understand the function of the “I” when representing the “we”, i.e. when a person works representing a nation.
Diplomatic communication was also addressed and the ambassador exemplified the importance of dialog in finding solutions and strengthening relations between countries. “Negotiation is fundamental. Through meetings, nations commit to defining and finding common positions to resolve conflicts. There are gains in economic, cultural and social aspects.”
Read more: Registration for IMPA Tech closes this Friday (27)
See also: OBMEP releases list of prize-winners in the 19th edition of the Mathematical Olympiad
