12/12/2019

Augusto Teixeira: From textbooks to blockchain

Augusto Teixeira prefers to immerse himself in mathematics standing up. During the eight hours a day he spends from Monday to Friday at IMPA, poring over percolations and random explorations, he only sits in his chair for brief moments. A computer monitor stand ensures he can work all day with an upright posture. "It's much better for the spine, and after a while it's easy to get used to," the mathematician assures.

This perseverance is reflected in his academic career. At 36, this native of Belo Horizonte has already worked at renowned educational institutions such as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he completed his postdoctoral studies. He has been a researcher at IMPA since 2011.

The son of Aníbal Teixeira de Sousa, Minister of Planning in the José Sarney government, Augusto had to swim against the tide to avoid giving in to his father's desire to build a career in politics. At the age of seven, this irreverence was revealed through a curious request: he wanted a birthday party with a "mathematics" theme. The request was granted. "My mother thought it was strange, but in the end I had the party I wanted," he recalls.

As he reached adulthood, his interest in computing and physics also began to emerge. "In the late 90s, computing was considered the 'career of the future.' Many of my cousins and friends went into the field," says Augusto, who grew up playing with his father's computer.

During the university entrance exam, she set aside her concerns about the job market to pursue a long-held dream: studying physics. After attending a course on real-line analysis during her undergraduate studies at the Federal University of Belo Horizonte, she realized she enjoyed theory and began to focus more on math subjects.

He visited IMPA for the first time at the 2Wednesdays Brazilian Mathematics Colloquium in 2003. “I found the building and the atmosphere wonderful. I hadn't heard much about IMPA and the idea that a space for mathematical research could exist was still strange to me. In this sense, coming here gave me a certain confidence that I could follow this path.”

Participation in the 2005 Summer Program sealed his desire to stay at the institute, says the researcher, who began his master's degree at IMPA that same year. “It's a really cool event, attracting people from various cities in Brazil and of all ages. It rejuvenates the place,” says Augusto, who will be teaching the Analysis on the Straight Line course in the 2020 Summer Program.

The researcher states that he chose probability as his research area because of its connection to physics, of which he remains a confessed fan. The mathematical object of random walks, which describes a path consisting of a succession of random steps, can investigate the movement of molecules in liquids and gases, for example. It was also applied in Google's first search algorithm, Augusto points out.

“I find the simplicity of statistical mechanics problems fascinating. They could appear in a high school math olympiad and everyone would understand them. Even so, they have remained unsolved for decades because they are simple, but also very difficult to solve. I really like the tools that have been and are being developed to study these problems, such as renormalization groups.”

Open Book of Mathematics

Recognizing the rigidity of the mathematics teaching materials available in the country for basic education, Augusto, along with his colleague and director of the School of Mathematics at Unirio, Fábio Simas, created the "Open Mathematics Book". Launched in 2018 by IMPA, the project is an effort by teachers to produce collections of mathematics textbooks for basic education in a collaborative way and with an open license (Creative Commons).

As an open-source computing enthusiast, Augusto states that the initiative aims to deliver an open work, created from diverse contexts and in a collaborative way, based on research in the areas of Teaching and Mathematics Education and on the experience of teachers who are daily in the classrooms of Basic Education.

“The situation of basic education in Brazil is difficult. We have several problems: the high cost of education in Brazil, the poor training and remuneration of teachers who end up being overwhelmed. For these reasons, the classroom is much more dictated by the teaching material than it should be. In addition, the system for distributing teaching materials in the public school system is very rigid. Small authors cannot get their books to educational institutions,” says the IMPA researcher.

The two project coordinators are now dedicated to rewriting the platform to improve it and create more material. “We’ve already completed 50% of the high school material, we have another 25% in progress, and we intend to finish everything by the end of next year.” Augusto and Simas also organize workshops with groups of 50 teachers from the public school system to instruct them on how to use the tool. “Even so, anyone who writes textbooks knows that they aren’t ready until they’re in the classroom,” says Augusto.

CARTESI

While conducting research in statistical mechanics, supervising master's and doctoral students, and coordinating teaching projects, this Minas Gerais native still found time to venture into another activity, taking on the role of scientific director at CARTESI , a platform for the development and deployment of decentralized applications composed of blockchain and off-chain technologies .

Created in 2017, CARTESI, which also includes IMPA researchers Diego Nehab and Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, emerged at a time when there was a lot of expectation surrounding blockchain technology . "Bitcoin, for example, was overvalued, and people wondered if a new internet would emerge, without the presence of a central regulatory body," he points out.

Seeking to solve some of the obstacles to the development of new technologies in this area, the computing community has begun developing high-investment projects. Augusto explains that one of CARTESI's biggest difficulties is providing development libraries for the platform. “In a wine label recognition application, for example, there are several development libraries behind it. Such libraries have not yet been made available for blockchain, which makes programming more difficult.”

Currently, the company is finalizing a blockchain game . The requirement for a digital signature is a barrier to overcome. “We hope that these multi-million dollar projects will solve some of these problems. Most of the time, these are problems that can only be solved in the long term and require a high financial investment. But we believe in the possibility of an internet without regulation, censorship, espionage, and all the rest.”

When he's not immersed in these problems, Augusto dedicates himself to caring for his two-and-a-half-year-old son, Caetano. "With a small child, there's no time left for anything else," says the researcher, who has already brought the child to visit IMPA on several occasions. Colleagues from Belo Horizonte were also invited to visit the room, from which he takes immense pride in the view. "When I arrived here and looked at this view, I thought: I'll never close this window again," he jokes. After spending the last year on sabbatical with Caetano and his wife, Maria, in Geneva and the capital of Minas Gerais, the researcher plans to enjoy it for quite some time longer.