Head of the Statistics Department at Unicamp since 2002, professor Nancy Lopes Garcia has just joined the gallery of full members of the Brazilian Science Association (ABC). Pro-Rector of Postgraduate Studies at Unicamp from 2018 to 2021 and coordinator of the area at the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), Garcia was the only specialist in Mathematical Sciences to join the group of full members.
Professors Igor Dias Jurberg, from the Chemical Sciences area, and João Vitor da Silva, also from the Mathematical Sciences, were elected affiliate members for the São Paulo region - a category created as a way of encouraging young researchers, those who present good initiatives and have promising careers.
Full and corresponding members will receive their diplomas in May 2024, during the ABC main meeting, to be held in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Affiliated members will participate in their diploma ceremonies in the midst of scientific symposiums taking place in their regions.
See the full list of new elected members.
This year, women are the majority among elected officials, making up 60% of representatives. This proportion reflects a trend towards gender equality at the top of the scientific career, which is increasingly reflected in the ranks of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Among affiliated members, equity was also achieved, with 50% for each gender.
At 59 years old, Garcia is one of the most recognized professionals within Unicamp, being a reference in the Statistics Department. His specialization in the area – started in his master's degree at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Impa), in Rio de Janeiro – gave him doctoral experience outside Brazil, more precisely at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States, in 1993.
“This is a great achievement. It's like my doctoral advisor said: 'The goal is to do good things, but it's always good when someone notices'”, said Garcia, vice-president of the Brazilian Mathematical Society (SBM) from 2017 to 2021.
“This is a recognition of all my work over all these years, both in my scientific production, in my work as a human resources trainer with my guidance at all levels, scientific initiation, master's and doctorate, as well as in postdoctoral supervision and contributions to the mathematical community”, he added.
“I am very proud of my career and even more so of my students, who are now in different parts of the world as teachers or successful professionals”, he guaranteed.
Passion for mathematics
Born in the traditional neighborhood of Mooca, in the east zone of São Paulo, Garcia learned from childhood to deal well with changes. At the age of 5, he left the capital of São Paulo to live on a farm in Atibaia, where he lived until he was 12. His school years continued in Itatiba until he passed the Vestibular in Statistics at Unicamp.
Campinas became his new home, amid the challenges of his academic career. Among these challenges was prejudice, which changed the course of his career.
“I always really liked math, I always did well [in math]. And that was the subject I did best in throughout elementary school. In high school, I went to a building technical school and wanted to be a civil engineer. However, at the time, it was said that civil engineering was not a career for women and I decided to do computing, which was the big thing at the time. I didn’t pass the Entrance Exam, I passed Statistics and decided to pursue this career,” she says.
Male reference
After completing his specialization abroad, Garcia returned to Brazil in 1993 to work effectively at Unicamp. She admits that most of the sources of inspiration in all her educational processes were men, which is why the new reality at ABC is extremely important for girls who dream of a career in mathematics, she says.
“My references were almost all male since graduation, so I think it's very important to have active women serving as an example that a woman's place is wherever she wants to be. It is possible to climb all the career ladders, in my case, academia”, she guarantees.
“We have had many achievements in recent years in terms of gender equality. However, we still have a lot to achieve. For example, among postgraduate students in Mathematics/Probability and Statistics, women make up only 25%. This achievement of becoming a member of ABC is another step in that direction”, he believes.
Mathematics broadens the horizon
To date, Garcia has published more than 60 scientific articles, some with high impact in the international community, and supervised more than 35 scientific initiation, master's and doctoral studies.
“Mathematics is the language of the world. The area of mathematics is broad. It ranges from very theoretical subareas, such as algebra, to very applied subareas, such as statistics and data science”, he explains. “There is a wide field of work, ranging from universities and research centers to industry, the financial market and forensic analysis. Studying mathematics broadens your horizon. Mathematicians can think abstractly and see connections that others cannot see”, concludes Garcia.
Affiliate Members
Jurberg has a degree in engineering, a master's degree in molecular chemistry and a doctorate in organic chemistry from École Polytechnique, Paris.
He is one of the founders of the Brazilian session of the American Chemical Society. At Unicamp's Chemistry Institute (IQ), Jurberg teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Your research group has a broad interest in catalytic methods, focusing not only on the development of fundamental organic synthesis, but also on applications aiming, when possible, at the transfer of technology to industry, thus causing a direct impact on our society.
Silva obtained the title of full professor from the Mathematics Department of the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing (Imecc) at Unicamp last year. Between 2018 and 2019 he was approved as a Conicet's Associate Researcher (a body that brings together researchers and whose purpose is to promote the development of science and technology in the country), obtaining a job in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina ). He also served as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at that university.
Between 2019 and 2020, he worked as a researcher for the Capes National Postdoctoral Program in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Brasília, where he also remained a full collaborating researcher (2019-2021).
