Renan Xavier works with international reference in spatial analysis at University of California Riverside
During his PhD in Economics at the Business School of PUCRS, Dr Renan Xavier applied the concepts of Markov Chain to the spatial context for crime rates in Rio Grande do Sul to develop the fourth article he wrote as a student in the program. He drew insights from an article by Serge Rey, an international reference in spatial analysis, and designed an app presenting these methods with a friendly and intuitive interface. He followed the suggestions of his advisor, Dr Adelar Fochezatto, and made a video giving details of his work and showing interest in working in Rey’s laboratory. He sent the video straight to him. Then, Serge has approved of his research in the USA. Xavier completed his PhD in Dec 2017 and began his postdoc at the University of California Riverside in September 2018.
“Dr Serge Rey told me he was working on a new geospatial study center at UCR, the Center for Geospatial Sciences (CGS) and that I could join the group. So, I looked at the activities that were being developed, put together a project and submitted it to the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal do Nível Superior – CAPES (Brazilian Federal Agency and Evaluation and Support of Higher Education)”, says he. Xavier was awarded with a grant and is expected to complete his research at the end of August 2019.
In Xavier’s view, UCR is a very collaborative environment and the exchanges are very fruitful. “I work with my postdoc fellows and with Serge Rey every day. However, it is very common for people from different departments to collaborate and one of the projects I work on involves an international reference in public policies and political science: Karthick Ramakrishnan”, adds he.
There are many projects involving CGS and UCR, and Xavier is making his contributions to three of them. The first such project involves the computing department and seeks to improve computer scalability in spatial Big Data. “I’m working on the development of an inferential framework for spatial segregation measures that have not been studied as of yet”, tells he. The second project looks at a new graphic interface in support of the new visualization technologies for Space-Time Analysis of Regional Systems (STARS), in an open code. “We’re comparing technologies and hope to write an article and present it at the SciPy conference next year, in Texas.” The third project has aroused out of a partnership with another department of public policies of UCR and intends to create a big repository of public statistics using graphic interfaces, user interaction and dashboards, similar to the one that is being developed in Dublin at Maynooth University. “At the moment, I’m working with the job market monthly data. As I have looked at the context of neighborhood in spatial-temporal models in my dissertation, I’m going to continue with my research and investigate other things”, explains he.
Xavier acknowledges the importance of PUCRS to his international career and makes mention of his advisor. “Dr Adelar Fochezatto has introduced me to Dr Serge Rey’s research and encouraged me to contact him. I’m very grateful to him. Besides, PUCRS has played a very important role as I learned a lot during my PhD in Economics, including the research environment in which I spent all these years. All the insights I gained in the course Assessment of Public Policies at PUCRS Business School I’m putting in practice in my project. I hope to do a good job here and build a research bridge between PUCRS and UCR and serve as a model for other researchers at PUCRS”, adds he.