09/10/2024

From physics to mathematics, Ana defends her doctoral thesis.

With a background marked by public education in Rio de Janeiro, Ana Victória Martins Quedo, 28, makes a point of highlighting the influence of different teachers on her academic training. It was during basic education at Colégio Pedro II that the IMPA doctoral student became fascinated by the field of exact sciences. “I always really liked mathematics, and the teachers at Pedro II have a good background. In class, they talk a lot about proofs. I feel that some classmates, for example, only understood other aspects of mathematics after entering university.”

A gold, silver, and bronze medalist in the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad for Public Schools), Ana also believes that the classes in the PIC (Junior Scientific Initiation Program) contributed to increasing her knowledge in the field. Despite her great interest in mathematics, the student initially chose to study physics at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). Three years later, she transferred to mathematics. “I wanted to understand the mathematical concepts well and how they modeled physical events. In this process of wanting to understand mathematics much more, I decided to change,” she explained.

Later, Ana completed her master's degree at UFRJ and is now defending her doctoral thesis “ Projective varieties with a numerically trivial canonical divisor and their automorphisms”, under the guidance of researcher Carolina Araujo. The thesis presentation will take place this Thursday (10) at 11 in room 232 at IMPA.

The work addresses three problems in the field. The first deals with automorphisms of K3 surfaces from the Gizatullin problem, for which a partial solution was found, in the case where the surface has Picard number 2. For the second problem, the student presented geometric examples of automorphisms whose existence was already known due to the results of Bossière, Camere and Sarti and Bossière, Cattaneo, Nieper-Wisskirchen and Sarti. Finally, in the third and last problem, she presents the solution to the Kawamata-Morrison cone conjecture for quotients of abelian manifolds. The research led to the possibility of a sandwich doctorate at the Université de Poitiers ( France).

“I worked on two of the three problems with two other students, Daniela Paiva, from IMPA, and Martina Monti, from Italy. These were very important partnerships. Working together gives a different perspective on the problems, and the exchanges show that mathematics can be very collective. You learn from others, but above all you learn to approach the problem from other angles,” she explained.

Female influence

With a career marked by female partnerships, Ana also highlighted the importance of working with Carolina Araujo. “I’ve felt like a fish out of water, I thought I didn’t fit in certain places. In college, I was the only girl several times, but at IMPA I found very nice people, and Carolina has always been a reference. She was an example of how to simply ‘be’, without giving up anything. She is a very welcoming person, who has a lot of strength, but without losing her kindness.”

At home, the partnership came earlier. Her mother, Agostinha Martins , besides being an economist, was her biggest supporter. “She doesn’t exactly understand what I do, but she has always been very supportive. If I’ve faced several challenges along the way, it’s because she was by my side encouraging me. And it’s been like that since I was a child.”