Newly graduated PhD, Otávio Menezes will do postdoctoral research in Europe.

Mathematician Otávio Menezes, barely having defended his doctoral thesis at IMPA, last Monday (7), already has a ticket to travel and start his post-doctorate at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon (Portugal).

Supervised by researcher Milton Jara from IMPA, Menezes had his thesis, "Non-equilibrium fluctuations of interacting particle systems," approved by a panel composed of Claudio Landim, deputy director of IMPA; Adriana Neumann, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS); Stefan Grosskinsky, from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom); Pietro Caputo, from Roma Tre University (Italy); and Charles Bordenave, from the University of Toulouse (France).

The doctor's work deals with mathematical problems originating from the field of statistical mechanics in physics. The goal of work in this area, says Menezes, is to create "a bridge between descriptions of matter at two different scales: the microscopic scale, in which billions and billions of particles move chaotically, and the macroscopic scale, which we observe with the naked eye and in which it makes sense to speak of quantities such as temperature, pressure, and density."

The mathematician explains that he worked with a class of problems arising from statistical mechanics to "deduce the equations that govern the motion of a fluid from the equations that describe the motion of its molecules."

Otávio Menezes' thesis may be key to future research, even if in a "very indirect way".

“Some idea from my work—a concept, a trick for doing a calculation, a way of looking at a certain type of question—can be modified by another researcher to solve their own problem. Then, a third researcher can adapt the second researcher's idea for another purpose, and so on. Perhaps one day this idea, already quite modified, will be used in a practical problem,” he says.

For now, the new PhD from IMPA leaves it to other researchers to find an application for his thesis. After all, he's packing his bags for Portugal.

In October, Menezes will begin his postdoctoral studies at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, under the supervision of the Portuguese mathematician Patrícia Gonçalves. The IMPA PhD holder intends to pursue an academic career, without forgetting the lessons learned and his supervisor.

“Milton Jara was always patient with me. He was always available. I could knock on his door at any time and talk about mathematics. He gave me a lot of advice and introduced me to many people, but the most important lesson was given through example. By living with him, I hope to have absorbed at least some of his sense of hierarchy of ideas, his intuition of what is essential and what is accessory, and his willingness to make the effort to distinguish between these two things,” he says.