Loewenstern Fellowship (São Paulo, Brazil)

In the summer of 2024, I was awarded $8365 by Rice University to conduct a fellowship in São Paulo, Brazil with an emphasis on social impact. There, I fostered a diplomatic partnership between Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie and my home institution, Rice University. I also interned in a neuroimaging/signals research lab with Dr. Paulo Boggio and designed a social impact business called EcoTuere, aimed to make recycling and composting financially sustainable and incentivizing for Brazilians.

Skills Used

• Portuguese Proficiency
• Social Impact Business Design
• EEG Data Aquisition & Modeling

See my Rice University blog post about the experience!

EEG Affective Neuroimaging Laboratory

I worked under Dr. Paulo Boggio, head of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Institute to research the temporal brain activity happening under the hood in research subjects when their brains create false memories. This project was completed by a team of two Brazilian students and myself, and spanned 3 months in the summer of 2024. This task involved learning to safely apply the delicate EEG electrode array onto the heads of subjects, monitoring signal data from the electrodes, and using EEGLAB to analyze & average data across trials.

In order to find trends in the functional response of the brain when subjects are shown a list of words, then asked later to identify which items they had already seen in a list of semantically similar words. When the user identifies a word as previously seen, it was noted whether they were correct or if this was a "false memory," then the other researchers and I analyzed their brain during the event using a concept called ERPs (event-related potentials).

🌍 EcoTuere: Green & Social Impact Business Design 🌍

One problem I noticed in Brazil was the extremely low rate of recycling and composting among Brazilian citizens. This is not a problem specific to Brazil — citizens of the United States only recycle 24% of their Municipal Solid Waste and compost 9% — but the numbers are much lower in Brazil (around 1.47% is recycled and 0.168% is composted).

But I had visited numerous recycling and material recovery facilities in Brazil, who explained to me that they were always on the lookout for new clients to send them recycled materials. Furthermore, I learned that Brazil achieved a 100% recycling rate for aluminum cans in 2023, the highest in the world. So why were the recycling rates so low?

The problem is that Brazilian citizens do not have enough incentive to consciously recycle all the time. The reason their recycling rates for aluminum cans is so high, for instance, is due to the existence of a system where 1 kilogram of aluminum cans can be traded for 5 Reais, equivalent to around $1 USD. This incentivizes jobless Brazilians to collect discarded cans and bring them to recycling facilities. Recycling rates for other materials are as low as 4%

So I worked with some Brazilian students to develop a business which would solve this problem: EcoTuere. The idea was to create recycling bins with scales and touchscreens attached, and strategically place them in areas commonly visited and easily-accessible such as gas stations and schools. Our organization would partner with a company called STIX, which awards members who sign up for their free loyalty program with discounts from stores they are partnered when shopping at these locations. Just as STIX members could receive discounts by shopping at partnered stores, they could also receive discounts from dumping recycled materials into our EcoTuere bins, which we would sell to material recovery facilities.

EcoTuere gives Brazilians a crucial financial incentive to recycle, which will increase recycling rates in Brazil. Material recovery facilities in Brazil are already advanced enough to handle almost anything you throw at them — by sending them more separated recycling, we can increase their profitability and production of post-consumer material, promoting a circular economy in Brazil.

You can check out our pitch here:

This experience was a humbling one. Solving social problems in the context of a different country, with a different culture, people, values, history, language, structure of government, and goals is not something a foreigner can do without lots of help from locals. I quickly realized that the most important way to spend my time was to immerse myself in the São Paulo way of life, in order to learn how Brazilians communicate and function, inside and out.

I took courses with Portuguese speaking students, who helped me learn the language. I dedicated hours every day to learning Portuguese, and was fluent enough to express myself after a month — two months later I could comfortably communicate with all citizens.

My partners at Mackenzie Presbyterian University helped me explore the issue of sustainability in Brazil from all different perspectives, which allowed me to learn the context and depth behind the problems Brazil faces related to environment. Together with a handful of Brazilian students from all different disciplines, I visited recycling plants, water management companies, an indigenous peoples reserve, museums, and much more.