To celebrate Student Day, the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) welcomed last Thursday (12) 3rd and 5th grade classes from the Santa Luzia Municipal School, the only one in the quilombola community of Capoeiras, the oldest in Rio Grande do Norte, located in Macaíba. The students had the opportunity to visit the facilities of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience (IIN-ELS) and learn more about the brain, the work of researchers and some of the main equipment used in laboratory research, such as microscopes. 

In total, 34 children visited the Institute, accompanied by coordinators and teachers from the school. They received an initial presentation about the brain and its main functions and were then divided into three groups to continue the visit. The groups were coordinated by master's students in Neuroengineering who, through games and recreational activities, explained how different aspects of the brain work, such as memory and immersion in virtual reality. 

The idea, says the teacher who created the project, Maria Carolina Gonzalez, is that the visit can spark children’s curiosity about the world of science and research. “The main contribution of a moment like this is to see that science is done by people like you and me. It’s not a distant person, a crazy scientist locked away in a laboratory. It’s boys and girls like them who are here doing this research.”

Born in Caruaru (PE), 26-year-old Neuroengineering master's student Cláudio Júnior says that if he had had contact with science since childhood, many of his future choices would have been quicker. “I come from a city in the countryside, where contact with what a researcher did was practically non-existent. That's why it's incredible for me to be able to participate in a moment like this, and provide them with more information about an area that, at that age, I still knew nothing about,” says Cláudio. 

Master's student Beatriz Moura, 22, says that her early exposure to the world of science was essential for her to become fascinated by Engineering. “When I was still a child, I had the opportunity to visit laboratories and I was fascinated by this world. This was certainly something that defined my professional choices,” says Beatriz. 

According to the vice-coordinator of the Santa Luzia Municipal School, Djane Moura, the visit also allowed for a different day for the children after two years of pandemic. “I loved it. When they got home from school, the parents reported that their children told them about the news and the knowledge they learned there, they were all very happy. They were in love.”