A little more about myself

I was born in the small town of Silvânia, Goiás, in Brazil, on May 8, 1993.

My father was a renowned lawyer in this small town, from whom I inherited the name.

My mom always believed in me from a young age. I probably wouldn’t speak English if she hadn’t been a firm believer that it would be important for my future and my brother’s.

I’ve loved video games since a young age, and my favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger. Ironically, I’m not super into open-world video games, and that includes Zelda. I’ve played a lot of Lineage II in my teens and before moving to the US. Good times!

Since I was a small child, I would say that I wanted to work with computers—it has always been my passion. As a teenager, I would spend a lot of time trying to hack Grand Chase or program certain bots. When I was about to choose my college course, I had to decide between Computer Science or Computer Engineering. Thankfully, I chose CS because otherwise, I would possibly never have discovered the beautiful paradise of Cantor, Gödel, Turing, Alonzo Church, and Martin-Löf. I fell in love with mathematical formalism in the course of Number Theory and have never stopped learning and working with the beautiful world of mathematical proofs ever since.

I’m a Blue Belt in Taekwondo. My PR solving the Rubik’s Cube is around 10 seconds, but nowadays, I probably take more like 1 minute. I’ve spent some time learning how to cook—enough that I dedicated an Instagram page to it. Ironically, I don’t love traveling so much. I’ve been a Spiritist since a young age, but nowadays, I think I resonate more with Umbanda. However, my faith is quite ecumenical, and the Hermetic Kabbalah is the backbone of my spiritual belief system. I also have a strong meditation practice that is mostly centered around visualization and contemplation. It turns out that “emptying the mind” is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I look around at the amazing peers I have, it’s hard for me not to feel like an impostor sometimes. But I try to focus on myself and my unique gifts. I believe that we are all unique and talented in different ways, but we still have to water those seeds daily and diligently.