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

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Bruno Oliveira Musso 6th year

This collaborative course has been a wonderful experience. With most of the activities centered around field visits, it is the best opportunity to see how engineering is really applied day –by –day. The visits to the wind-power components plants, AQUAPOLO treatment plant and Cantareira reservoir were the most instructive. This visit to the reservoir was indeed really sad, we could see how extreme the actual water crises is in Sao Paulo. Also, I am now more sure about the importance of having young students ready to resolve this kind of problem in the near future. But for me the most important contribution of this course is the bond we are creating between Sao Paulo and Boston, a strong friendship that I believe will stand for all our lives. I would like to thank to the course organization, to the professors from Harvard and Poli and to all my friends of Brazil and USA that made this last 10 days unforgettable. PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY AVI!

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.