Impressions from the Field: Harvard and Poli-USP Engineers Explore Brazil

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

By Luciana Mascarenhas’13 and Fernando Beck’15

An awesome part of the trip has been cultural outings. As hosts, our job is to show the city around to Harvard students, make sure they understand our reality, and, of course, have fun.

We have been to different restaurants, where they get to know better our food and culture. We showed them USP’s main campus and Sao Paulo downtown, where we had the chance to go up Martinelli building (in the picture) and had a nice view from the city. Last night we went to Vila Madalena, and everybody had a good time learning how to dance, or at least trying.

Everybody’s very interested in knowing more about Brazil and the way we live, and we more than glad to explain to them! Some people are even learning some phrases in Portuguese!!

Fernando is a 2nd-year undergraduate student in Electrical Engineering, Poli-USP - Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo.

Luciana is a 5th-year undergraduate student in Environmental Engineering Poli-USP - Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo.

About

This collaborative field course is an initiative of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the Escola Politécnica of the Universidade de São Paulo (Poli-USP), and Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin America Studies.

The course will take place in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) from January 11-21, 2015, with equal numbers of participants from Poli-USP and Harvard. It offers the unique chance for participating students and faculty to explore the complex challenges faced by engineers, urban planners, and policy makers in the field.

2015 topic: Sustainable Cities
The intense growth of cities in recent decades has increased the urgency of finding sustainable solutions for resource use in urban environments. Through a combination of field site visits, lectures and group discussions, the 2015 SEAS/Poli-USP Collaborative Field Course on Sustainable Cities offers the opportunity for hands-on engagement in São Paulo, a metropolis of 20 million inhabitants. During the course, participants will gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for urban challenges and solutions related to energy, sanitation, transportation, water and more.

In 2014, Brazilian students visited Harvard to learn about Urban Adaptation to Climate Change. The year before, in 2013, Harvard students traveled to Brazil to study The Global Challenges of Energy Production. The 2013 blog posts are archived below. This is the sixth year of the program.

Views expressed in this blog are the personal views of the individual authors, and the statements made do not officially represent views of the University or any of its units or officers.