He always wanted to pursue a higher education in the United States. Moving there meant living closer to his brother, who works in Chicago. He only needed permanent residence. In 2008, Bruno Azeredo’s wish was granted—sealed in an envelope and delivered to his home in Brazil.
"When I was 19, my family was awarded the green card through the U.S. Diversity Program," Azeredo said. "We moved a year later."
Written by Lyanne Alfaro
He always wanted to pursue a higher education in the United States. Moving there meant living closer to his brother, who works in Chicago. He only needed permanent residence. In 2008, Bruno Azeredo’s wish was granted—sealed in an envelope and delivered to his home in Brazil.
"When I was 19, my family was awarded the green card through the U.S. Diversity Program," Azeredo said. "We moved a year later."
Consequently, Azeredo enrolled at Illinois after successfully transferring his coursework to the school, which was not far from his sibling. He completed the second half of his undergraduate education at Illinois, when he applied for and received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship.
At the age of 24, he is now concluding the master’s program in Mechanical Engineering with a paper on nanomanufacturing of silicon nanowires with applications in building thermoelectric devices. A majority of his research is funded by the NSF and the Department of Energy (DOE). Azeredo said he remembers his first class at Illinois—still his favorite—TAM 212 with Professor Dan A. Tortorelli.
"I found ways of studying really hard for that class," Azeredo said. "I remember coming to his office hours almost every week. I used to do a lot of math for this."
He said that the collaborative learning environment at Illinois helped him adjust quickly to the new school and encouraged his to stay for his master’s degree.
"I think the student environment cultivated in many groups here is very friendly," Azeredo said. "A competitive research environment is very stressful and not as effective for some types of personality. I think that when students get along well with other research groups, we can then do very good work together."
For past five years, Azeredo focused his studies on nanomanufacturing with advising from Professor Placid Ferreira, Professor Sanjiv Sinha, and Adjunct Professor Keng Hsu. Specific projects include finding alternative uses for thermoelectric devices—used to generate electricity—such as harvesting energy from waste heat, like car emissions.
"These devices can be potentially deployed into many conventional systems to improve their efficiency," Azeredo said. "One of the challenges is to manufacture these devices, and we develop the processes here to address this particular device. It is a large-scale process."