Overleaf Advisor Interview: André Gradvohl, University of Campinas

André is Assistant Professor at School of Technology (FT) in University of Campinas (Unicamp), and recently joined the Overleaf Advisor Programme to help spread this new way of writing and publishing research among his colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students.

In this short interview, André tells us more about himself and about his experience using Overleaf in his research and teaching.

Overleaf: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

André: I am Assistant Professor at School of Technology (FT) in University of Campinas (Unicamp). Nowadays, I teach at Information Systems and System Analysis and Development undergraduate courses, where I supervise some Scientific Initiation projects. I also teach and supervise graduate students in Technology graduate program at FT/Unicamp. My fields of expertise are distributed systems and high-performance computing, and I am applying this expertise in research about space weather. By the way, my research group web page (http://highpids.ft.unicamp.br) has more information about the projects we are working on. Feel free to visit this page or my profile at LinkedIn (https://br.linkedin.com/in/andregradvohl).

Overleaf: What are the biggest challenges you face in your work?

André: The biggest challenge now is to increase productivity in research in our department (FT). As our graduate program is still consolidating, we need more students to work on our projects, to develop high-quality research and to write texts with a quality suitable for publication.

Overleaf: How did you first find out about Overleaf?

André: I met Overleaf while it was still WriteLaTeX, in April 2014. At the time, I was in Paris and I had to write a text for a conference using LaTeX, along with some colleagues in Brazil. We wanted a system that could allow us text editing, at any time, without us having to stay sending e-mail messages and controlling versions. Shortly after, I heard about WriteLaTeX (Overleaf) and I started using it.

Overleaf: How would you describe your experience of using Overleaf / WriteLaTeX?

André: My experience with Overleaf has been very good. Especially the integration with Mendeley, which I am also an advisor for (https://www.mendeley.com/profiles/andre-gradvohl). As I work in different places (sometimes at home, sometimes at the University and sometimes traveling), Overleaf has helped me to maintain a single updated version of my texts, regardless of the computer I'm using.

Overleaf: What's next for you and your work?

André: My main challenge now is to convince my undergraduate and graduate students using Overleaf together with Mendeley. For now, they are still using proprietary word processors, which do not use LaTeX. However, I believe that soon they will be convinced of Overleaf's advantages, not just to write papers, but also to prepare posters and slides.

Overleaf: In summary, how would you describe Overleaf in a single sentence?

André: The best way to produce high quality texts in a world with clouds.