I was born in California and raised in different parts of Brazil, where I lived most of my life. I am currently in the US doing my PhD in Astronomy at University of Florida - Gainesville (UF).

 

In 2014, I graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) in Industrial Engineering, with a minor degree in Entrepreneurship. During college, I spent some time doing undergraduate research in a project for Petrobras (Brazil's National Oil and Gas Company), taught Math for kids for a while and also made a 3-month internship at the Walt Disney World - Florida. As my final Engineering work, I developed the project of a personal finance monitoring mobile app focused on low-income families, which represent 85% of Brazil's population.

 

After graduation, I worked for big companies, such as Shell and Coca-Cola, at Finance and Pricing. In a competing corporative environment, I developed some good programming skills, and also learned how to lead projects and the best way to deal with different stakeholders. Now, after understanding my true passion, I'm in a totally different field of study, learning new things, and being able to apply everything I learned as an Engineer in a different way. Last year, I acquired my master's degree in Astronomy, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Valongo Observatory), and I am now a first-year PhD student at University of Florida, focusing on cosmology and extragalactic astrophysics.