<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he 111 years of the Polytechnic School of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Poli-USP) sum up the trajectory of a country that knew how to modernize itself with swift steps. S\u00e3o Paulo took on cosmopolitan airs thanks, in good measure, to the contribution of pioneers like engineer Antonio Francisco de Paula Souza (1843-1917) or the constructor of tall buildings and mansions Francisco de Paula Ramos de Azevedo (1851-1928), both founders of the S\u00e3o Paulo Polytechnic School, in 1893.<\/span>\u00a0 At the end of the 1920s, when to govern was synonymous with building roads, the institution provided personnel to sketch the first draft of the highway network that, decades later, was to replace the railroads for good.\u00a0 Polytechnic engineers even ventured to produce armored vehicles and grenades, when S\u00e3o Paulo arose against Get\u00falio Vargas in 1932. The School, which was incorporated by the University of S\u00e3o Paulo in 1934, was soon to gain fame as a hothouse of public men\u00a0 \u2013 a number of governors of S\u00e3o Paulo went through it.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Between the decades of the 1950s and the 1970s, that phase when the Brazilian economy grew at the pace of the Asiatic tigers and lacked technological solutions to back development, the polytechnic engineers perhaps lived their golden age.\u00a0 \u201cWe would go to college by bus carrying that enormous T-square and called attention to ourselves.\u00a0 Many a future engineer arranged a girlfriend like that\u201d, recalls Professor Moacyr Martucci J\u00fanior, the president of Poli-USP\u2019s Research Commission. The advent of information technology caused an earthquake in engineering, which exploded into new specialties. From electrical engineering, computing engineering sprouted.\u00a0 From electrical and mechanical engineering, mechatronics.\u00a0 Computers brought the T-square a well deserved retirement and laid new foundations for teaching and research at the institution, where today 495 teaching staff are at work, and 4,300 undergraduates and 4,000 postgraduate students are studying.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Poli-USP has morphed itself to maintain its modernizing role, and has continued to create devices capable of improving the well-being of society.\u00a0 It is possible to cite noteworthy contributions from researchers and professionals educated at the institution in countless areas.\u00a0 In the 1960s, planning in the area of transport in the country, which transformed traffic engineering into a science and was applied in the construction of the subway, also emerged thanks to the work of professors from the Poli, like \u00cdon de Freitas and Antonio Galv\u00e3o Novaes.\u00a0 Between 1990 and 1994, USP\u2019s Polytechnic School was run by Professor Francisco Romeu Landi, the director-president of FAPESP\u2019s Executive Board, who died in April at the age of 71.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n If Brazil today has at its disposal an industry of microelectronics and expertise in the area of telecommunications, it owes this to the capacity of the Polytechnic School for doing research and forming personnel in these areas over the last 30 years. The school claims to have created the first Brazilian computer. Baptized as \u201cUgly Duckling\u201d, it was the work of researchers from the area of electrical engineering, in 1972.\u00a0 With the passage of 30 years, this seed has produced a tree laden with fruit. Although Brazil, like several other countries, has not managed to develop a competitive computer industry, as originally planned, the researchers from the IT area of Poli-USP have stood out for the creation of software and network security. <\/span><\/p>\n The School\u2019s Computer Architecture and Networks Laboratory is a world-wide benchmark in cryptography codes. Paulo Barreto, a researcher from the Poli and head cryptographer of the Brazilian company Scopus, took part in the creation of the algorithms adopted for the digital signature of the European Community and of the American government, after winning international competitions for defining security standards. The Laboratory also created safe environments for the pages of several banks on the Internet and developed a security system for the payment of the Vehicle Tax (IPVA), which\u00a0 put an end to the frauds practiced in S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s vehicle licensing department, Detran. <\/span><\/p>\n Numerical tank<\/strong> The Brazilian naval industry gained consistency from 1956 onwards, after a strategic agreement entered into between the Navy and the Poli, which gave origin to the Naval and Oceanic Engineering Department.\u00a0 The department continues to be active, but it has found new vocations.\u00a0 In the last fifteen years, it has strengthened its ties with Petrobras, in a line of research that culminated with the creation, in 2001, of a numerical test tank.\u00a0 This is a simulator, equipped with a cluster of 120 personal computers, capable of forecasting three-dimensional models of anything: aircraft, cars, ships.\u00a0 \u201cIn a numerical tank, the processing of information is much more rapid, and it is possible to carry out simulations of very complex systems\u201d, says Professor H\u00e9lio Mitio Morishita, the head of the department.\u00a0 In the case of Petrobras, the main interest is the development of oceanic systems, like oil platforms, too complex to be tested in a real test tank. <\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span>he Navy used the services of Poli-USP\u2019s numerical tank before carrying out the adaptations to the aircraft carrier S\u00e3o Paulo, which used to belong to France.\u00a0 There were doubts whether the enormous vessel would fit in the dry dock of the Navy\u2019s arsenal, in Rio, where is was to be refurbished.\u00a0 Based on images and measurements taken of the aircraft carrier and the dock, the tank showed that it would indeed be possible to park the aircraft carrier inside it \u2013 in actual fact, it was to be a close shave.\u00a0 It was only after the simulation that the refit started.\u00a0 Virtual reality tools are used more and more in engineering schools. Since 2000, the Polytechnic\u2019s Integrable Systems Laboratory has been housing the Digital Cave, a complex for virtual reality, which creates an interactive environment by means of the projection of multiple images. Up to six people can enter the cave at the same time, and interact with the computer-simulated world. Besides its applications in the branches of engineering, the cave can also be used in medicine, in astronomy, and in the production of interactive games<\/span><\/p>\n The link between the vocations of the past and those of the present is becoming more palpable in some of Poli-USP\u2019s departments, like the Electrical Energy and Automation Engineering department. Under the command of Professor Jos\u00e9 Roberto Cardoso, the Applied Electromagnetism Laboratory continues to work with research into electrical traction in railroads and subways.\u00a0 \u201cAs we took part in the implantation of the first line of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s subway, the knowledge has been built up\u201d, Cardoso says.\u00a0 There is not a lot of work to be done with regard to railroads, which are more and more losing importance as a means of transport.\u00a0 But as several Brazilian capitals are building their subways, the laboratory has been summoned to help, by making simulations of the trains running along the track at various speeds, as well as of the quantity of electricity needed to make the whole system work.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n The laboratory is also devoted to research into electromagnetic interferences.\u00a0 It has helped, for example, manufacturers of household appliances to control the electromagnetic emissions of their products at the internationally required levels. It has also assisted the Navy to do a study of the electromagnetic compatibility of the nuclear propelled submarine project that is being carried on at the Aramar complex, in the interior of S\u00e3o Paulo. This is an extremely sophisticated study, given the profusion of wires and circuits planned for the gigantic prototype. But the laboratory\u2019s life is not limited to providing support for those who need it.\u00a0 At the request of Petrobras, a tubular linear motor has been developed for extracting oil, which is going to replace the items of mechanical equipment known as nodding donkeys, installed in 9,000 wells on land in the country.\u00a0 The electric motor has the gift of increasing the flow from the wells and suffers less wear and tear, since, unlike the nodding donkeys, it does not produce any attrition with the walls of the well. <\/span><\/p>\n The School gets involved in theoretical research with the same zeal with which it seeks solutions for prosaic problems. In the Transport Engineering Department, the use of a compound road surface in which blocks of cement concrete work in adherence with asphalt concrete is being tested. Brought from the United States, the technique creates a more resistant surface and helps with the maintenance of road surfaces with structural deficiencies.\u00a0 The Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Department, the one with the School\u2019s largest academic production, developed a method capable of recycling the discarded ore dust which pollutes the environment. This dust, produced in great quantity in the process of degrading the ore, would clog the furnaces and used to be regarded as useless. In work on the thermal behavior of materials, the researchers from the Poli found that when the iron ore dust was mixed with charcoal, pellets, or briquettes, were produced, which after a curing process, became extremely hard and could be stored. The waste and the pollution came to an end. Today, they are used in the furnaces as raw material for steel.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe research had great importance in the quest for clean and nonpolluting processes in metallurgy\u201d, says Professor Jos\u00e9 Deodoro Trani Capocchi, the head of the Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Department.\u00a0 There are 400 scientific works published in indexed magazines each year. The researchers there sometimes help to solve crimes. At the request of the S\u00e3o Paulo Scientific Police, they prepare reports on the deformation of projectiles or the wear and tear of other materials that are capable of elucidating the circumstances of homicides or accidents. <\/span><\/p>\n Inside the Polytechnic, also at work is the International Water Reuse Referral Center (Cirra), linked to the Hydraulic and Sanitary Engineering Department. The group of researchers from this institution is working on several fronts, from the development of hydraulic systems that save water (like a cistern for a toilet that uses only 3 liters of water) to testing strategies for the reuse of water resources, such as the use of untreated water in agriculture, in industrial cooling systems, or in the irrigation of urban green areas.\u00a0 They also help the National Water Agency to formulate new policies against waste.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n O<\/span>n the list of practical applications, a researcher from Cirra designed a system for reusing water that will serve the third terminal at Cumbica Airport, in Guarulhos, to be built in the next few years.\u00a0 Today, all the water used at the airport\u2019s two terminals, which receive 14 million passengers a year, is taken from the airport\u2019s subsoil. The construction of a third terminal is going to call for a new solution, because the source of water is almost exhausted and there not be sufficient water.\u00a0 The proposal is to submit the waste water to a partial treatment, using it again to wash the tarmac and to cool the airport\u2019s air conditioning system, to mention two examples.\u00a0 \u201cIt is possible to establish a more parsimonious use of the water by following multiple strategies\u201d, says Professor Ivanildo Hespanhol, Cirra\u2019s director.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n As in the majority of careers, field of knowledge in engineering has expanded a lot in the last few decades, and the Polytechnic School has striven to embrace all the developments, creating new departments and specializations. But the changes and oscillations in the labor market are so abrupt that a branch of engineering much contended for in an entrance exam may see its interest reduced a few years later, when the student is graduating. This has already happened several times. The traditional civil engineering, for example, lost strength in the 1980s, the lost decade in which Brazil stopped making hydroelectric power plants and highways, frustrating a generation of young professionals. Today, the demand for civil engineering has improved.\u00a0 In spite of dearth of major works, room has opened up for engineers, for example, in the expansion of public works and infrastructure for sanitation.\u00a0 Telecommunications engineering lived through its peak and fall in an extremely short period of time. With the privatizations, in the mid-1990s, competition in the entrance exams exploded, but there was a severe downturn in 2000 and 2001, which scared off the interest of the candidates.\u00a0 \u201cNeither the euphoria nor the hangover was justified\u201d, says Paul Jean Etienne Jeszensky, a professor from the Telecommunications and Control Engineering Department.\u00a0 \u201cToday there is a move towards an equilibrium in the labor market, a scenario that is neither so good nor so bad as one imagined before\u201d, he explains.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Such oscillations are natural and, except for the disappointment that they generate in the newly graduated, do not bring any profound consequences.\u00a0 It so happens that the polytechnic engineer is trained, above all, to adapt to new situations, to be ready to solve problems that cannot even be imagined today.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe School provides an excellent basis. The student takes up the rest\u201d, says Jeszensky. \u201cWe prepare professionals for taking decisions, professionals who are always ready to learn new things\u201d, says Moacyr Martucci, the president of the Research Commission. Just as the civil engineers frustrated in the 1980s made dazzling careers inside and outside engineering \u2013 the financial market, for example, stocked itself abundantly with these professionals \u2013, the telecommunications class will be absorbed.\u00a0 But there are also courses that do not know of any crisis. Computing engineering offers two classes of 40 students at each entrance exam. One of these classes does a course on traditional lines.\u00a0 The other has a different syllabus, in which theory and practice have the same weight.\u00a0 The modules alternate every four months \u2013 with the student now dedicating himself to theoretical disciplines, then doing an attachment in a company, which the School itself undertakes to arrange for the pupils.\u00a0 \u201cThe engineer leaves here with a strong theoretical basis, and also with noteworthy professional experience\u201d, says Professor Wilson Vicente Ruggiero, from the Computing Engineering and Digital Systems Department.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n The School is rehearsing a conceptual change in the education of its pupils.\u00a0 There is a demand in the market for work from professionals with a more humanistic baggage.\u00a0 Today\u2019s engineer has to take into account variables that were relegated in the old days.\u00a0 It has been a long time since a hydroelectric power plant was designed without taking into account the ecological impact that the work would cause. Constructed at the beginning of the 1980s, the Balbina plant, which supplies Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, is an example of an extremely beautiful work of engineering that perpetrated an environmental crime, creating a gigantic lake in which species of trees are rotting to this day. \u201cAn excessively technical education sometimes makes the engineer think without taking into account that there are people in the process\u201d, says Professor H\u00e9lio Morishita, whose department, of Naval and Oceanic Engineering, altered its syllabus and nowadays calls for its students to do 24 optional disciplines in other units of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>T<\/span>he choice of these disciplines is up to the student.\u00a0 The best is for them to have a contact with sociology, communication, philosophy.\u00a0 Some resist and take to the disciplines of the School of Economics and Management, which have more affinities with engineering\u201d, Morishita says. The Electrical Engineering Department has brought about a similar alteration to its syllabus.\u00a0 Humanization in the education of its pupils is one of the objectives of Poli 2015, a program to adapt the School, by 2015, to the challenges of this beginning of the century. Amongst the declared goals of\u00a0 Poli 2015, those that stand out are \u201ccompetence in the human relationship and in communication, an ethical posture, and cultural and social commitment to Brazil\u201d.\u00a0 Without giving up, of course, excellence in teaching.<\/span><\/p>\n The future of Poli-USP is virtual as well.\u00a0 Distance education is now a reality.\u00a0 The classes of 105 disciplines are recorded in video and made available on the Internet, as is the didactic material used by the professor.\u00a0 Those who missed the lesson can watch it at home on the screen of the computer.\u00a0 Should the virtual student not understand the explanation can interact in a chat session and ask questions.\u00a0 If it is a doubt that another pupil has had before (80% of them are recurrent), the reply has been stored and comes up right away.\u00a0 Otherwise, the professor replies later, by e-mail.\u00a0 The courses and their didactic material are now beginning to be freely available to anyone who has a computer at home.\u00a0 \u201cThe idea is to disseminate the knowledge deposited in the Poli to other engineering students and faculties, to give back to society, in the most ample form possible, the investment that it has made in this school\u201d, says Professor Wilson Vicente Ruggiero. If it works, the school that was born linked to the elite \u2013 its founders Ramos de Azevedo and Paula Souza had to get their degrees in Europe \u2013 will have achieved a fine settlement of accounts with the past.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USP\u2019s Polytechnic School helped to modernize the country","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-115354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115354"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=115354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span>In the telecommunications field, professors from the Poli-USP were hired at the beginning of the 1970s by Telebr\u00e1s, to help to modernize the Brazilian telephone exchanges, which were analogic.\u00a0 The digitalization of the switching centers expanded the access of Brazilians to a telephone and integrated the national territory. This group also developed, in 1976, the prototype that provided for international direct dialing calls.\u00a0 Part of these researchers ended up straying away from the School to found Telebr\u00e1s\u2019s Researches and Development (CPqD), one of the principal dynamos of Brazilian research in telecommunications.<\/span><\/p>\n