Rodrigo Hideharo Sato

Rodrigo Hideharo Sato is a student of third year of undergraduate medicine at the School of Medicine, University of São Paulo. He was born in Ribeirão Preto, a city where lives almost 700 000 people, one of the largest cities in the state of Sao Paulo and the largest producer of sugar and ethanol in the country. This economic activity that is so important to Brazil uses an archaic form of production in which fires are made for cutting the cane. This burning produces huge amounts of particulate matter, and because of this intimate contact with the pollution and its effects Rodrigo has an interest in studying the impact of pollution on humans. During his time at university Rodrigo took part of social projects for population in need. In one of the projects he teaches Brazilian history for underprivileged people in a preparatory course named MedEnsina. In another, he assists in caring for needy people who don’t have the appropriate health monitoring and medical support, in remote regions of São Paulo, project that occurs on Saturdays. His initial research experience in the FMUSP is in the Department of psychiatry and it’s about the association between clinical characteristics of bipolar disorder and family history of mood disorder in first degree relatives. Rodrigo believes that living a year in the USA to study and conduct researches at Harvard is a unique opportunity to evolve as a student maybe help to change the reality of his native land.