My name is Rogerio
Costa Reis de Sousa and I am a Graduate student in the
Physics department of the University
of Maryland at College Park .
Most of my friends here call me Roger, the english
analog
of my first name. I was born in a large city in Brazil, Belo Horizonte,
in
the state of Minas Gerais. I lived there up to 18 years of age when I
moved
to Campinas (State of Sao Paulo) to pursue a Bachelor of Sciences in
Physics.
I went to State University of Campinas
(Unicamp) and also got a Master at Sciences degree in the
Department of Physics
. Then I applied to some universities in the U.S. (Yes, I took the GRE,
Toefl
and all these tests) and ended up in Maryland in Fall 1998.
Sunset in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
(My
hometown)
Aerial view of my former University,
Unicamp
Front entrance
College Park is a nice place to live. I live at
Graduate
Gardens, an apartment complex only for grad students just next to the
university.
The location is fine, specially because it is pretty near College Park
downtown
where most of the places to eat are located (but I am learning to cook
for
myself!). Graduate Gardens is also near College Park's Metro Station,
and
once you get there you have access to most of Washington D.C.. Graduate
Gardens
is owned by the University of Maryland, but is administered by a
private
company, Southern Management Corporation. Unfortunately, this company
has
been trying to push the prices of our rent to market levels, what is
quite unreasonable specially since our salaries did not increase
accordingly. Therefore
the graduate students got together in a
Tenant association
, and we are protesting the escalating rent increases using our union
power. Needless to say there are thousands of things to do in
Washington, ranging
from Museums (take a look at the Smithsonian
institution
), monuments and numerous bars. Sightseeing is also fun in D.C.,
specially
because you can have a good walk going through the numerous monuments.
The first year of a physics graduate student here is
very
hard: I took three classes (Classical Mechanics,
Mathematical Methods and
Quantum Mechanics I
) plus a 20 hour Teaching Assistantship where I had to grade lots of
homework
from the students of Phys 262 (a second course in basic physics). I
also
had to help them in two office hours and guide through the tutorials, a
program
developed by the Physics
Education
Group to make sure they understand the subject well. In the spring
of 99 I taught
the lab version of this course, 262A. That was a good experience as I
had
to teach three lab sections, each one 3 hours long. In the 3rd semester
I
was a TA for Physics 121, basic physics for Pre Medicine, Biology and
Animal
Science students. I had to teach laboratory and discussion sessions, as
well
as grade exams and quizzes. I liked the experience of teaching majors
in
the life sciences, it was considerably different than teaching
Engineers.
Right now I am working for Professor Sankar Das
Sarma's
Group on a project to build Quantum Computers using semiconductors.
I think it is very worthy the effort of placing a
home page on the internet. I believe the internet works as a major
community where
you can get to know a large quantity of people and you can share ideas
with
them. In other words, the internet is a solution to the communication
problem
of the larger and larger world population: You can meet people online
by
looking at their homepages without getting out of your home, and you
can
spread out your ideas, latest news or results in research just by
posting
them on the net. Browsing the web is a nice adventure, you never know
where
you will get. Well, that's my contribution, and I hope you will like
it!
