Before traveling to Brazil to conduct research, fourth-year engineering Ph.D. student Maddie Watson had never been outside the US. A West Virginia native, she was accustomed to her small town, so the buzz and energy of a city like São Paulo was a change of pace for her, one that she welcomed. For Maddie, spending time in the country that her research would impact wasn’t just necessary for her studies—it was a chance for personal growth, too.

Maddie’s Ph.D. research group, led by College of Engineering Professor Alex Dowling, focuses on engineering processes and systems. They develop novel mathematical modeling and computational frameworks to optimize energy technologies across materials, devices, and systems, and infrastructure length and timescales. Specifically, Maddie’s work involves optimizing and giving guidance to scaling up the process of ethanol into bio-jet fuel from sugar cane ethanol in Brazil.

Maddie explains how their research starts by examining the issue on a small scale: “We wanted to be able to tell the sugar cane mill owner if it was a good idea or not to invest in this technology to use their ethanol to make bio-jet fuel.

“Then, we’re starting to think about the big picture,” she continues. “Throughout the country, there’s a ton of these sugar cane mills—which ones should invest in this technology?” From there, they consider policies that would need to be put into place, with the intended end result being a framework that helps assess these new technologies for sustainability purposes.

“They're always going to cost more in the long run, but [we’re] trying to help facilitate them as a solution,” Maddie says.

Because she does computational research, most of her collaborative work on this project can be done remotely. But when Maddie had the opportunity to travel to Brazil and work directly with other researchers on the project, she jumped at the chance. Though Maddie had been to Brazil for a short trip earlier in her Ph.D. program, this time she would be staying for a full month and she would be the only student going. While it was tricky being on her own, she shares that Notre Dame São Paulo Director Thaïs Burmeister de Campos Pires was especially helpful during the process, assisting with coordinating Maddie’s travel and even meeting up with her for dinner while she was in Brazil.

“Notre Dame Sao Paulo is always happy to help with visits from students such as Maddie, who come to Brazil with curiosity and enthusiasm,” said Thaïs. “Her work exemplifies the kind of collaboration that is important to Notre Dame, bringing together global perspectives and research to make a real-world impact.”

The longer trip allowed Maddie time not just to experience the city further but to collaborate better with other engineering students and researchers at their partner institution, the University of São Paulo (USP).

“They have really strong programs there with really well-trained students,” Maddie noted. “At Notre Dame, we are the only research group in the chemical engineering department that does process systems research. We still have collaborations with other people in our department, but not with optimization experts. So it just kind of worked out naturally.”

For years, USP has been a valuable partner for Notre Dame São Paulo, providing exchange programs to undergraduate students. The Dowling Lab’s relationship with USP was established through Professor Dowling’s role at the Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources (CISTAR), one of the flagship Engineering Research Centers funded by the National Science Foundation. CISTAR brings together industrial companies, innovation partners, pre-college institutions, and world-class researchers from five partner universities, Notre Dame among them, to make a national impact on the economic landscape of energy and hydrocarbon utilization.

The research Maddie has been doing in Professor Dowling’s lab falls under a sub-category of CISTAR called Center-to-Center (C2C) that specifically focuses on connecting CISTAR research with research in Brazil. Because of their similar specializations, USP was an excellent collaboration partner for Maddie’s area of research.

While most of the time, they’re collaborating remotely, Maddie says that it was crucial to have some in-person time together. “Just being able to sit in a room together and work on things…we were able to make pretty good progress in one month,” she shares.

The time together also allowed them to bring in other experts to offer insights on next steps. “Because we’re dealing with this sustainable energy technology, we want to be able to guide policy in the future. So we were able to bring in somebody who’s a really good economist, who knows a lot about policy, to help us have more reasonable solutions.”

But one of the most valuable takeaways from her time in Brazil has less to do with progress on her research and more to do with an internal gift: motivation. Over halfway through her degree and inching ever closer to her dissertation, the trip abroad was a much-needed reminder of the importance of her work.

“It’s really motivated me to be excited about my research,” Maddie says. “Just being around people who are interested in your work and ask really good questions—it was motivating.”

To learn about study abroad and research opportunities in São Paulo, visit the Notre Dame São Paulo website.

Originally published by Jessie Carson at saopaulo.nd.edu on January 06, 2025.