- Pronouns:
- They/Them
- Hometown:
- Porto Alegre, Brazil
Vitor (they/them), originally from Brazil, will be majoring in mathematics and physics at IU, a dream destination for them because of the reputation of its nuclear physics program and the research opportunities this campus offers. Their proudest accomplishment so far is their physics blog (“Vitor’s Science and Weird Stuff”), which shows their ability to find solutions to complicated problems. They also believe that the diversity cultivated at IU will allow them to be themself. Their most important value is honesty (“with oneself and with others”), and they fondly remember staying up very late for a robotics competition, an intense and exhausting experience but also a worthwhile one (Vitor's 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. They credit their physics teacher Mr. Gomez for having passed on to them 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.