ACADEMIC LIFE
During my undergraduate studies at Federal University of Maranhao (UFMA), I worked with medical images and 3D models visualization. I attended programming contests and participated of the ACM-ICPC Brazilian Finals in 2007.
During my second undergraduate year, I started work at the Image Processing and Analysis Lab. At this point, I worked on developing software to help medical doctors in lung and breast cancer diagnosis. As part of this project, I studied pattern recognition and machine learning techniques. Near the end of my undergraduate studies, I attended Computer Graphics classes and moved to another lab: Interactive Media Lab, where I did my final course project in 3D urban model visualization using spatial databases.
I completed my undergraduate studies with good knowledge in Computer Science, having studied in depth the above-mentioned areas, and I achieved a grade of 7.9/10. After that, I received a fully scholarship to attend a masters course at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). PUC-Rio is one of the best Computer Science department in Brazil, as assessed by both governmental and non-governmental ranks. During my master’s studies, I deepened my experience with Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. In a first project, I worked on a way to improve the communication between deaf and hearing people by using Computer Vision to translate Brazilian sign language.
Still during my master’s studies, I have started to work at Technical Scientific Software Development Institute (Tecgraf/PUC-Rio) and changed my focus to the geophysics applications. Following this path, my Master Thesis was related to the lithologies classification based on well logs. To do that, I worked with Machine Learning techniques such as SVM, MLP, and Ensemble methods. In my master’s course I achieved a grade of 8.9/10.
When I finished my master’s degree, I was invited to work as a full-time developer and researcher in TecGraf.
There, I was part of a team that develops software for visualization and interpretation of seismic data named ‘v3o2’. The software we develop is used by Petrobras, the largest oil company in Brazil. As a senior developer, I was responsible for designing new features, refactoring activities, and training new members. I have contributed to the development of tools for: 3D visualization of well and well logs; drilling well monitoring in real time; crossplot of seismic volumes, etc.
Nowadays, I’m a Ph.D. candidate at Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI), University of Zurich and ETH Zurich in which I am member of The Cortical Computational Group and Neuromorphic Cognitive Systems.
MY STORY
Personal Profile
I’m from São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil. A small city, by Brazilian standards, of a million people. My hometown is also an island, although some people question the islandiness (is that even a word?) of it.
I always was interested in helping people, and bring awareness to the most diverse topics. Doing science is one way that I found to do so.
I worked in the oil industry for a while and decided to shift gears to neuroscience, just cause I thought I could do a better impact in the world. And, I couldn’t imagine how moving to Zurich would change my life and put me in a position of really making a difference.
Since my undergrad, I’m involved in gender equality issues. Coming from a Computer Science bachelor in a class with 50 people and being the only girl there, I saw a lot of gender imbalance. My contribution to gender equality by then was minor, but it started there.
Moving to Zurich I met the 500 Women Scientists (WS) and joined the organization committee of the 500WS Zurich Pod. Since May 2019 I joined also the Center for Neuroscience’s Gender Equality Committee from University of Zurich.
I have a personal goal of bringing awareness to gender bias and subtle sexism in academia. If you would like to contribute to this, reach out!
Besides that, I love social media and I’m super active, particularly, on Instagram. I like to post photos of places I go and trips I do. Lots of people from my hometown have never left the country (yeah, Brazil is big, there’s plenty to see there). And I like to share my experiences and cultural mistakes with them, so as to open up a bit their vision of the world.
One more thing: I change my hair a lot. Plenty of colors, styles, haircuts. I think we have to bring color to our life in any way possible. Life is not black and white.