15/08/2018

'It's important to do research without thinking about applications'

Karine Rodrigues

Luciana Luna Lomonaco knows that “clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and the bark of trees is not smooth, just as lightning does not travel in a straight line,” as the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010) wrote in his seminal work "The Fractal Geometry of Nature." In 1975, the French mathematician of Jewish-Polish origin coined the term fractal to define a new class of mathematical shapes whose irregular outlines could mimic figures found in nature.

Luciana Luna, a professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a specialist in Dynamical Systems, studies one of the best-known fractals, aptly named the Mandelbrot Set, and its copies inside and outside the geometric object. If we divide a fractal, each part is similar to the whole.

Currently, fractal geometry is applied in diverse fields such as Economics and Medicine. But Luna, one of the seven winners of the 2018 L'Oréal-UNESCO-ABC "For Women in Science" award – created to promote gender equality in the scientific environment – is focused on issues that, at the moment, are confined to the world of Pure Mathematics.

“It’s very important to be able to do research without thinking about application,” she says, drawing attention to something she considers reckless. “Much more research is funded that has immediate applications. This framework worries me. I think it’s dangerous because if you’re not free to think and do things that, maybe, I don’t know, will only work in 50 years, you might be failing to develop something that could be great later on,” she observes.

Born in Milan, Italy, and raised in Europe, where she also completed a significant portion of her studies – graduating (2007) from the Università degli Studi di Padova, obtaining a master's degree from the Universidad de Barcelona (2009) and a doctorate from Roskilde University (2012) – Luna believes that this unbalanced distribution of research funding is not unique to Brazil.

Luna recalls, for example, the consequences of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the United States, in 2008. “In times of crisis, the first thing that is drastically cut is funding for research. Especially for mathematics. With the argument that it is useless. Even more so pure mathematics. In certain cases, you may not see the usefulness now. But you never know what might happen.”

Given this, Luna further praises the L'Oréal-UNESCO-ABC Prize for recognizing the relevance of research in pure mathematics. Like the other winners, she will receive a grant of R$ 50,000 to develop a project over the next 12 months. "I was very surprised and happy to receive the call (informing me that I was among the winners)."

The 2018 edition broke participation records.

Developed by L'Oréal Brazil in partnership with UNESCO in Brazil and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the award provides scholarships in four categories: Life Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics. The 2018 edition broke participation records: 524 applications were registered, 34% more than in 2017. Since 2006, the award has recognized the work of more than 80 Brazilian female researchers.

In addition to Luna, six other female researchers were recognized in this edition of "For Women in Science": physician Fernanda Cruz (UFRJ), biomedical scientist Sabrina Lisboa (USP), biologist Angélica Vieira (UFMG), physicist Jaqueline Soares (UFPO), biochemist Ethel Wilhelm (UFPEL), and chemist Nathalia Bezerra (UFPE).

According to Luna, the lack of diversity in scientific fields increases as women advance professionally. “When I started climbing the career ladder, I clearly noticed that the number of women decreases significantly. And this is more or less the case worldwide. In departments, at events, at conferences. To this day, only one woman has won the Fields Medal. There is a latent sexism. It's difficult to stay there. You have the feeling of being evaluated all the time. But you have to believe in yourself,” she advises.

Luna, who came to Rio to participate in the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), praised the existence of a children's area on site where participants could leave their children during the lectures.

“Besides the exchange with mathematicians, I found the children's area very important. I've seen women with six-month-old babies in their laps at several conferences,” says the mathematician, who will receive the award at a ceremony at L'Oréal headquarters in Rio de Janeiro on October 4th.