Virgílio Almeida and Maria Silvia Bastos reflect on career and employment

IMPA Tech kicked off the 2026 academic year with the Aula Magna held on Monday (16), which brought together speakers Maria Silvia Bastos Marques, chief advisor to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, and Virgílio Almeida, professor emeritus at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and IMPA’s Technical-Scientific Council.

The Aula Magna 2026 marked the start of the third class of the higher education course. Around 100 students from all regions of the country were selected for their performance in knowledge olympiads, such as OBMEP, or in the Enem Mathematics test.

“It is already a tradition to bring two personalities from our community at the beginning of the year whose life trajectory and contributions can serve as a model. Virgílio and Maria share common characteristics: excellence in their academic careers and the generosity to give back to society all that they have acquired through education,” said IMPA’s director-general, Marcelo Viana.

The first woman to chair the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), Maria Silvia has built a distinguished career in public administration and the private sector. She was also president of Goldman Sachs Brasil, Icatu Seguros and Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN).

“It’s great to have a flight plan, but we need to be open to the unexpected. […] Wherever I’ve been, I’ve learned a lot about subjects I didn’t know, but my solid academic background has helped me a lot throughout my life. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to move through so many sectors if I hadn’t had the analytical skills and knowledge I acquired during my training,” he advised.

Maria Silvia also served as Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Secretary of Finance and as coordinator of the external area of the Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat for Economic Policy. “There is one striking feature of my career: I was the first woman in many of the positions I’ve held. And in some I’m still the only woman. It’s nice, but at the same time it’s very sad, because we should have more women in these positions,” she said.

A reference in artificial intelligence (AI) studies, Virgílio Almeida also shared his career in academia and the public sector and took advantage of the meeting with the young people to discuss the future of AI.

“In a digitalized society, no one knows who is in charge of what. There is an invisible hand of technology that rules us. Our lives are increasingly influenced by algorithms, whether it’s when you order an Uber, choose a movie on Netflix, or use Waze to guide yourself,” he said.

Last year, the professor was one of the winners of the first edition of the Unesco-Uzbekistan Prize for Scientific Research on Ethics in Artificial Intelligence. The award recognizes initiatives that tackle the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence and propose innovative and responsible solutions for its use.

“I have a fundamental conviction: a modern and fair country depends on science, technology and universities. I think you are part of this history and you should think about the public contribution and how to motivate society towards science issues”, said Almeida.

He also advocated interdisciplinary training, with attention to the social and human dimensions. “The future requires bilingual professionals – not in the sense of speaking English, but engineers with a more solid background in the arts and the ability to develop technologies ethically.”

In a scenario of rapid technological growth, algorithms are increasingly associated with power. “We are living in a time that is difficult to predict. AI is advancing rapidly, but it still has flaws and is often concentrated in the hands of large companies. It is transforming the future, but you have the ability to shape it now,” he said.

In this context, Almeida stressed that technological development needs to go hand in hand with ethical and social reflections. For him, training professionals capable of understanding these transformations is one of the great challenges facing universities in the contemporary world.