About | gustavo-alves

I'm a physicist. I mean, I'm a movie critic. Actually, I'm a geophysicist that works for Petrobras in Rio. But I live in California and study at Stanford. I'm all of the above.

2013 - today

Presently, I am on my second year as a PhD candidate with the Stanford Exploration Project. My work right now is focused in elastic modeling of the wave equation. Mostly time-domain finite-difference. Eventually, that could change, since it depends on my research... and if Biondo Biondi (my advisor) tells me to. That's the student part.

2006 - today

Since 2006, I have worked as a geophysicist for Petrobras at CENPES, the research center in Rio de Janeiro. My research focus was in wave-equation illumination studies and numerical modeling of acoustic and elastic wave equations. The geophysics group at CENPES is dedicated primarily to develop seismic imaging and velocity estimation methods for the company and has been responsible for the development of Petrobras' Reverse Time Migration (RTM) algorithm, amongst other technical advances. The group also offers techincal support to many areas of Petrobras, from Exploration to Production.

2000 - 2006

During this period I got my degree and sequentially my MSc in Physics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). My dissertation topic was "Synthesis and Characterization of Fullerenes and Fullerols with Biological Applications". This is a fancy way to say I burned graphite rods and tried to make tiny soccer balls of them. And sometimes I would try to attach tiny molecules to them. And then inject these in mice and bacteria (I didn't do the injecting part myself). Given the amount of carbon dust I had on me everyday at the lab, I like to think of those years as my coal miner years. But this was probably the most exciting work I've done in Science and still look back fondly at those years.

1998 - 2013

For almost 16 years, I was one of the founders, editor and critic for the movie website Confraria de Cinema (The Movie Confraternity). This was an awesome experience that taught me a lot about writing and even more about Cinema and what it means to be a serious critic. And I got to interview some famous people and get "Press" clearance for many events. In our golden years, our website had 100,000 unique pageviews a month, so we were doing kinda good. Unfortunately, times change. But that's a long story. Buy me a beer and I'll tell you about it.