Brito Cruz

Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, born in Rio de Janeiro on July 19, 1956, is one of Brazil's most noted physicists and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. The scientific director of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and a full professor of quantum electronics at the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brito Cruz is engaged in research in which he uses femtosecond lasers to study ultrafast phenomena.

Education Brito Cruz began his studies in Electrical Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica (ITA) in 1974 and received his degree in 1978. He received an M.Sc. degree in physics in 1980 and a D.Sc. degree in physics in 1983, both from the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (State University at Campinas), popularly known as UNICAMP.

Career and research In 1981-82 he was a researcher at Istituto Italo Latino Americano, Laboratório de Óptica Quântic at the University of Rome. He was named a “Professor MS4” in Physics at UNICAMP in 1986. In 1986-87 he was a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. In 1989 he was named a “Professor MS5” in Physics at UNICAMP.

In 1989 he was visiting professor at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides de l´Université de Paris V; in 1990 he was a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1994 he was promoted to “Professor MS6” at UNICAMP, and continues to hold that title.

He was Director of the Physics Institute at UNICAMP from 1991 to 1994 and from 1998 to the present. He was Dean of Research at UNICAMP from 1994 to 1998, and from April 2002 to April 2005 was Rector of UNICAMP.

He is a member of the Superior Council of FAPESP, has been its president twice (1996–98 and 1998–2000), and since April 2005 he has been its Scientific Director. At FAPESP he oversees the review of 18,000 research proposals every year. Under his direction FAPESP has supported research in all scientific disciplines and organized special programs in Bioenergy and Global Climate Change.

Brito Cruz and his team have shown “that 6 femtosecond pulses, which are only three optical cycles long, could be generated by compensating dispersion to third-order. These short pulses allowed studies to be done in bacteriorhodopsin, organic dyes and semiconductor films.”

Other professional activities From 1995 to 1999 he was vice-president of the Brazilian Physical Society (SBF); he has served as editor of the Revista Brasileira de Física Aplicada e Instrumentação. He was also coordinator or director of several events sponsored by the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste and was a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Optical Society of America. In the same year he visited Madrid in an effort to promote collaboration between scientists and science educators in Brazil and Spain.

Personal life In addition to Portuguese, Brito Cruz is fluent in English and Italian, and also has some fluency in French and Spanish.