I know few people in Turin but they seem to me to put passion into their work
Raniere Menezes was born in Pescheira, a village in Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil. He is 30 years old and speaks Portuguese, English and Italian. He arrived in Italy almost by chance in 2019 when he was still a doctoral student: his tutor in Brazil had contact with a professor at the University of Turin who was interested in his thesis project. After graduating in Physics, at the University of Pernambuco, he decided to move to the city of São Paulo, Brazil, to attend first a Master’s degree in astronomy and then a four-year Doctorate, one of which he did, in fact, at the Physics Department of the University of Turin.
Raniere explains that there is strong socioeconomic inequality in Brazil and research funding is concentrated in the few big cities. São Paulo has one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, yet those who do a doctorate there can hardly get a postdoctoral degree. Hence his choice to focus on Italy, more specifically on UniTo where he won a two-year research grant this year.
As soon as he arrived in Italy, Raniere did not know the Italian language, but he tells us: “Something different happens with Italian when compared to English, English is tiring, Italian is more like Portuguese and it’s musical, I like it!”
“I learned a little bit on the Internet and mainly through Italian songs, especially listening to Lucio Dalla, whose lyrics I used to translate!”
Now that he speaks better Italian, he would like to actively participate in science popularization by working with entities such as the Pino Torinese Astronomical Observatory: “I would like to participate and interact with those who don’t know astronomy: in Brazil in São Paulo there is a Project called “Noite com as estrelas, “Night with the Stars, with which once a month we bring people to watch the stars by explaining them!”
He tells us that what impressed him most about Italy is the great passion that goes into the work here: “I don’t know if it’s Turin or Italy, I know a few people but they work with passion: the person who makes the pizza, he tries to make the best pizza possible, and so do the others, the baker, the researcher…!”
Raniere would not go anywhere else; in the future, he hopes to continue his research in Italy or at most return to Brazil to be a professor.
He misses his family, but more than anything it is the food of his country that he misses: faijoada (black beans with pork, rice and manioc flour), churrasco (mixed grill of marinated meat).
