The Master's student Paula do Vale Pereira was admited in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Doctoral Program in Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering. Paula will work at the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment under the guidance of Professor Steven Barrett from september onwards. The research project, still in definition, will be in the alternative fuels for aviation area, considering technical, environmental and economic aspects related to this search for a more eficient fuel.
"On a happiness scale going from 0 to 10, being admited in the MIT was 1000. Since high school i dreamt about studying at MIT, so i never measured efforts on working hard, sweating and dedicating myself to what i was doing. Of course there are hard times where we think about dropping off everything, but in these times the important thing is to learn from your mistakes, remember why you're working so hard and never give up. We also have to bear in mind that alone we cannot win any championship: I strongly thank everyone that helped me to grow in this journey so far - my family, my friends, my current coworkers and from past projects. Staying at Polo, for example, taught me a lot about the theory and the practice of engineering; brought me a nice networking; allowed me to inovate; made me think big. My mentors, professors Melo and Jader, were fundamental in this journey, once they've given me freedom to guide my Master's project the same time they were helping me promptly whenever requested, resulting in an incredible learning with responsability environment".
The Engineer Paula is prominent in the area. Currently she's concluding her Master's Degree under the guidance of Prof. Cláudio Melo in the Thermic Engineering area in Polo – Research Laboratories in Cooling and Thermophysics of EMC/UFSC. She's graduated in Mechanical Engineering by UFSC and in Business Management by UDESC. She was a scientific initiation scholarship holder for seven semesters in the Polo laboratory, international thermic sciences reference center; volunteer for three semesters in the non-tripulated aircrafts project and construction group Céu Azul Aeronaves, with whom she was crowned national champion and bronze medal winner in the SAE Aerodesign International competition; intern in the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics at the Imperial College, in London, England; intern in the R&D area of household refrigerators in the company Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte, in Giengen, Germany; scholarship holder for two semesters of the PET Metrology and Automation program. Has papers published in journals and international congresses and has medals in physics and mathematics olympics, besides being in first place overall on the two entrance exams she's been through. Concerned about the quality of the public education in Brazil, Paula was a volunteer teacher of mathematics in the popular pre-college course Einstein Floripa for two years and currently helps in the integration of several popular pre-college courses of the country through her work at the NGO Brasil Cursinhos.
