Marcus Fontoura had a career in companies such as Microsoft, Google and IBM and will present a special class for students at the FGV EMAp next week.

On April 16th, the School of Applied Mathematics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV EMAp) welcomes Marcus Fontoura, Technology Director at StoneCo., for a master class for all interested students at the institution. The theme will be “Engineering Principles and Culture” in the presentation that starts at 4pm (Brasília time) at the FGV Cultural Center, in Rio de Janeiro.

Marcus Fontoura is Technology Director at StoneCo. and has worked at Microsoft and Google

StoneCo. is one of the largest fintechs in the card payment processing segment in Brazil and Fontoura has led the technology sector since June 2022. The executive had a career in large companies in Silicon Valley, in the USA, where he served as vice president in Microsoft's Azure cloud, leading the team that took care of efficiency improvements in the product.

Before working for eight years at the company founded by Bill Gates, Fontoura held positions as a research scientist and framework architect and product lines at Google and Yahoo!. At IBM, he won the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award after developing a new generation of technology for the North American computer company and implementing it at w3.ibm.com.

In 1999, Fontoura completed his doctorate at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) in a joint program with the Computing Systems group at the University of Waterloo, in Canada. In the same year, he embarked on a career in the USA, where he currently resides, and completed his Post-Doctorate in Computer Science at Princeton, one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

His experiences working in technology and IT companies in the USA promise a very high level class for the School's students. Fontoura intends to prioritize the principles of Engineering and systems development to relate topics to the reliability and efficiency of software applications.

It is worth mentioning that FGV EMAp was a pioneering institution in Brazil to offer a degree program in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In 2023, for example, the institution graduated its 1st class of the course.  

Scheduled event

Marcus Fontoura's master class will be given next Tuesday, April 16th, at 4pm (Brasília time), at the FGV Cultural Center, in Praia de Botafogo, nº 190. For those interested in the FGV EMAp, there is no need to register in advance. Just go to the venue on the day to watch the presentation.

Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Course at FGV EMAp

The data scientist is the professional responsible for highlighting the knowledge hidden in large volumes of data. In the midst of this process comes Artificial Intelligence, which is the set of computational, mathematical and engineering techniques that aim to train computers in order to simulate human activities.

The School offers techniques that enable computers to improve their algorithms, first testing them with established data, and with each iteration produced, getting closer to a solution to the proposed problem.

This is an extremely new area full of challenges that is not yet offered so widely in Brazil. And FGV is still one of the few institutions that offers the opportunity to acquire professional training of international quality in this sector.