A Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics boosted the career of João Carabetta, current Chief Technology Officer of Rio de Janeiro and President of IplanRio

“I chose FGV EMAp because it was the only school in Brazil offering a modern master’s program in mathematical modeling,” says João Carabetta, President of Iplan Rio | Image: Iplan Rio

A strike was what changed the path of the young university student João Carabetta, today the Chief Technology Officer of Rio de Janeiro and President of IplanRio, the municipal company responsible for the city’s technology and digital innovation. In 2015, while studying Physics at a public university and preparing for a master’s degree, João joined his colleagues to found Transparência Unicamp, a collective that sought to understand, using data, what the strike was questioning and the real extent of the budget cuts.

This curiosity led him to interview budget and finance technicians within the university administration, analyze data and spreadsheets, and delve into public policy. Through this, he developed an interest in the field and realized that well-executed analyses could improve public debate and decision-making. “I realized that even the smallest thing I did with data could have a real impact on public service,” he recalls.

Instead of pursuing a master’s in Physics, João decided to enhance his programming skills with the goal of working with data to improve life in cities. At the time, data science and big data were emerging trends, and in his research, Carabetta discovered that the School of Applied Mathematics at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EMAp) offered a modern master’s program in mathematical modeling, with strong connections to real-world projects.

“It was essential to join FGV EMAp because while taking the courses, I was involved in public policy projects at the Center for Technology and Society (CTS-FGV), linked to the Law School, publishing analyses in the press, including the Congress in Numbers project, which involved analyzing data from the National Congress,” João recalls.

He also remembers that during his time at CTS, he became the first person in the world to capture Waze data to study urban phenomena such as traffic flow, floods, and even the location of potholes. Guided by Professor Eduardo Fonseca Mendes, his master’s thesis, entitled Mining jams into pollution: how Waze data helps estimating air pollution in large cities, focused on using Waze data to model air pollution, particularly the concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the respiratory system and are among the most harmful to human health.

“The tool I created provides a micro-level detail and can estimate which areas of cities around the world emit the most carbon dioxide,” he explains.

The research received an honorable mention at FGV EMAp and served as a foundation for his work at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where he worked for nearly a year and a half. There, the team adopted the Waze-based data approach he had developed to evaluate the impact of urban interventions, from vehicle rotation in Lima to bridge construction in Buenos Aires, among other projects.

In parallel, João helped launch Base dos Dados, an organization that gathers and makes large public infrastructure datasets available in the cloud, now a national reference for open data.

“Anyone working with public data dreams of having a single place that centralizes all datasets. The big challenge has always been the high maintenance cost of these databases and ensuring free access for many users. The solution we found was to use BigQuery, which organizes the data in a ready-to-use format. In this model, the consumption cost is paid by the user, and since Google provides 1 TB of free usage per month, most people can access the data at no cost, which made the system feasible and solved the scalability problem,” he explains.

João Carabetta took part in Rio Innovation Week 2025, the largest technology and innovation event in Latin America | Image: Social Communication Office – IplanRio

How Data Becomes Public Service

Back in Brazil, João began as Head of Data at the Rio de Janeiro Transportation Secretariat, later taking over the management of data across the entire city government, and in 2025, he assumed leadership of IplanRio. In the administration, he helped create the Data Office (2021), which integrates information from more than 20 departments and feeds a datalake used in day-to-day decision-making, from monitoring school attendance to the healthcare network, urban safety, and citizen services. By May 2025, this repository contained over 4.7 billion records.

The impact of this digital transformation can be seen in projects such as:

• Transportation: GPS monitoring of the entire fleet allows near real-time tracking of routes and frequency. The system increases transparency in bus subsidies and prevents contractual violations.
• Health: Unified systems now display patient history, exams, and medical appointments on a single screen, information that was previously scattered.
• Safety and Operations: Radar and camera readings help identify anomalies and support field operations; predictive models and computer vision detect floods and blockages, generating alerts for the Operations Center. 

The team, which started with only two people (including fellow FGV EMAp alum Fernanda Scovino), now has 50 members distributed across city departments. João personally recruited and trained the team.

“We made a silent evolution, and today we can distribute capabilities across departments, ensuring projects move forward and survive,” João summarizes.

This work was recently recognized by Google Cloud, which highlighted Rio de Janeiro as one of the world’s leading examples of strategic use of data to improve public services, alongside institutions such as NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the governments of the U.K., Netherlands, and Finland.

For João Carabetta, overcoming the challenges of leading city technology is made possible by the way of thinking he developed during his master’s. He credits his Applied Mathematics training at FGV EMAp for his ability to structure complex problems, identify creative solutions, and, most importantly, not be intimidated by large obstacles or multiple variables.

“Applied Mathematics gave me a powerful toolbox. That’s what allows you to face highly uncertain situations and find a feasible path,” he says.

This mindset, he explains, makes a difference in political negotiations, team management, and the implementation of large-scale systems. “Sometimes, you’re the smartest person in the room, not because you know more, but because you’ve learned to look at problems differently,” he adds.

According to him, graduates in applied mathematics are far ahead of professionals who later try to move into data, as they have a solid and versatile foundation.

“The market is desperate for this profile. We currently have openings, especially in data, engineering, product, and digital operations,” says the IplanRio executive.

Applications open for postgraduate programs

Applications for FGV EMAp’s postgraduate programs are open until September 30. The school offers Master’s and Doctoral programs in Applied Mathematics and Data Science, designed for those who wish to deepen their knowledge in research, mathematical modeling, and innovative applications across a wide range of fields.