Hometown:

Porto Alegre, Brazil

Vitor (he/him), originally from Brazil, will be majoring in mathematics and physics at IU, a dream destination for him because of the reputation of its nuclear physics program and the research opportunities this campus offers. His proudest accomplishment so far is his physics blog (“Vitor’s Science and Weird Stuff”), which shows his ability to find solutions to complicated problems. He also believes that the diversity cultivated at IU will allow him to be himself. His most important value is honesty (“with oneself and with others”), and he fondly remembers staying up very late for a robotics competition, an intense and exhausting experience but also a worthwhile one (his team won a prize). Books that matter to Vitor include Albert Camus’ The Plague (because of the ways in which it integrates philosophical problems into a captivating plot), H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Color Out of Space” (“the most well-constructed horror story I have ever read”), and Robert Gilmore’s Alice in the Wonderland, which introduced Vitor to the delights of theoretical physics. He credits his physics teacher Mr. Gomez for having passed on to him a lasting enthusiasm for physics and thanks him for his “passion, wisdom, and wondrous attitude toward almost everything.” Vitor will hold the Glaubinger scholarship in the Wells Scholars Program.