With the challenge of being entirely remote, between November 30th and December 3rd, the XVIII Unicamp Scientific Initiation Congress took place. The event brought together presentations by 1.535 students, who exhibited their work in different formats and were evaluated by an internal team and another external to the University. Lectures by researchers from Unicamp and other universities in Brazil and abroad also incorporated the program, attracting a wide audience.
The students presented their work in thematic panels, divided by areas of knowledge: arts, humanities, biological sciences and exact sciences and technological sciences. The interaction at the event involved more than 44 thousand views of works, 4 thousand comments, 21 thousand accesses, 7.600 PDFs opened, 6.400 videos opened and 15.500 private messages exchanged.
The Congress was held by the Pro-Rector of Research at Unicamp, whose pro-rector, Professor Munir Skaf, highlights the success of the event despite the challenge of needing to be remote due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The scope was spectacular, there was a very good response and it is still growing, as the works are still available online. The interaction was great, there was a wide range of questions, reactions and compliments. This was a positive point, having a lot of participation. Furthermore, it was really cool to see that the works can be presented in different ways”, he says, commenting on the fact that the works ranged from PDF exhibitions to animations and videos.
The dean also highlights the importance of scientific initiation activities for the training of students. “It gives you the opportunity to experiment on a day-to-day basis with topics you see in the classroom and this is important for choosing career paths. Scientific initiation also helps in the formation of critical thinking. Another important aspect is that it provides participation in long-term activities, which require collaboration with other team members”, he points out. Furthermore, remembers Munir, for those who wish to pursue an academic career, scientific initiation paves the way for postgraduate studies.
Scientific merit award
The 1.535 works were first evaluated by an internal Unicamp committee that selected around 10% of the works. Secondly, they were evaluated by an external committee, made up of researchers linked to CNPq from several universities. Check out the awards for scientific merit:
Fine Arts
- Post-anthropocentric aesthetics: art and Artificial intelligence - Héllen Lourenço dos Anjos (Medialogy) / Faepex
Humanities
- The effects of new technologies on democratic choice - Jade Miranda Becari (Social Sciences)
- Rural sanitation and gender: characterization and impacts of the health crisis on the daily lives of rural women - Letícia Alaniz Garcia (Biological Sciences)
- Survey and systematization of sources in educational periodicals in the early days of the New Republic - Letícia Mercedes Cutri Murer (Pedagogy)
- Interrupted school paths - the resumption of EJA as a form of resistance from the popular classes and in defense of humanization processes - Maria Eduarda Berton dos Santos (Pedagogy)
- The contradiction of the real: an exploratory analysis of the black movement in Sorocaba (SP) - Matheus Henrique dos Santos Fagundes (Social Sciences)
- The concept of beauty and sophistic argumentation in Plato's Hippias Maior - Renato Semaniuc Valvassori (Philosophy)
Biological
- NMR-Based Metabolomics Applied to Search for Drugs Resistance Biomarks in Patients with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy - Alessandri Barcia de Godoi (Farmácia) - co-authors: Amanda Canto, Amanda Donatti, Douglas Rosa, Clarissa Yasuda, Mariana Martin, Melissa Quintero, Fernando Sendes and Ljubica Tasic
- Assessment of the Participation of Human Kinase Nek5 in the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis after DNA damage - Ana Luisa Rodrigues de Oliveira (Biological Sciences) - co-authors: Camila de Castro Ferezin, Fernanda Luisa Basei
- Molecular evolution in dolphin hearing genes: different evolutionary pathways for marines and freshwater echolocation? - Letícia Magpali Moura Estevão (Biological Sciences) - co-authors: Elisa Karen da Silva Ramos, Erica Martinha SIlva de Souza and Lucas Freitas
- Photocatalytic and antimicrobial potential under visible light of TiO2 coating doped with calcium, phosphorus and bismuth obtained by electrolytic oxidation plasma - Lyvia Regina Rafaela Hamparian (Dentistry) - co-authors: Ariane Bezerra Santos and Bruna Egumi Nagay
- Identification of the most representative salivary microbiota from shotgun and amplicon sequencing - Rafaela Rye Nishiyama (Dentistry) - co-authors: Claudio Trigo, Simone Oliveira and Rodrigo Jardim
- Study of neonatal screening data for congenital adrenal hyperplasia in patients followed by the pediatric endocrinology sector at HC-Unicamp - Yasmin Soares Lazaro Pereira (Medicine) - co-author: Sofia Helena Valente de Lemos Marini
Exact Sciences
- Petrography of the ore and deformation microstructures in quartz vein in the Serrinha do Guarantã Cu-Au deposit, Eastern Sector of the Alta Floresta Mineral Province - MT - Diego de Alvarenga Rodrigues (Geology) - co-authors: Dailto Silva and Rafael Teixeira
- Petrography, geochemistry and mass balance of the hydrothermal alteration stages of the Hades cupriferous deposit, extreme southwest of the Carajás Domain, Pará - Helena Martinho Coradini (Geology), co-author: Thais Caroline Murer
- Classification of biological images using descriptors extracted by deep convolutional networks - Marina Rocha Martins Monteiro (Applied and Computational Mathematics)
- Synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the performance of the Ni/Nb205 catalyst in the hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation reactions of furfural in liquid phase - Eduarda Caroline Duarte Amatte Coelho (Chemical Engineering) - co-authors: Maria Martinelli Costa and Sílvia Fernanda Moya
Technological
- #Pracegover: Automatic Image Autodescription - Gabriel Oliveira dos Santos (Computer Science) - co-author: Esther Colombini
- Characterization of hand gestures through a smartphone-based force myography fiber optic sensor - Matheus dos Santos Rodrigues (Control and automation engineering)
- Estimation of biomass in pasture using time series of remote sensing images and machine learning - Vitor Hiroya Nisieimon (Agricultural Engineering) - co-author: Aliny dos Reis
Lectures attracted a large audience
During every day of the program, professors from Unicamp and other universities gave lectures on current topics. The lectures attracted a large audience and had wide interaction. The first lecture, “What matters for a good performance in graduation?”, was given by Unicamp's dean of Undergraduate Studies, Eliana Amaral, at the opening of the event.
Global climate change and the Amazon were the theme of the lecture by researcher Paulo Artaxo Netto, from the University of São Paulo (USP). Professor Natália Pasternak, also from USP, gave a lecture on scientific dissemination and the responsibility of the scientist. Ximena Villagran spoke about archeology and the settlement of the Americas.
From Cardiff University, an institution with which Unicamp has a strategic partnership, Professor John Pickett presented a talk on sexual pheromones and new approaches to using this signaling to protect cultivars and combat agricultural pests.
From Unicamp, Thiago Nicodemo, from the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH), presented a lecture on the theme “History of the Future: archiving, memory and the possibilities of new technologies in the Humanities”. Sandra Ávila, also from Unicamp, from the Computing Institute (IC), spoke about “Artificial Intelligence: Where does it live? What does it feed on? Why does it exist?”
All lectures and works can be accessed at event platform, for those who registered at the
