Hi! I’m Cristofer Silva. I’m 19 years old and I was born in Ribeirão Preto, the countryside of São Paulo, Brazil. I was accepted into Computer Science and Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Technology has fascinated me since childhood, inspired by my father’s work with computers and my affinity for logic. I later discovered the opportunity to impact our society by combining technology with entrepreneurship through hackathons. Since then, I apply my knowledge in technology and innovation to democratize education in my community. After graduating, I plan to develop a gamified educational platform to increase student interest and, consequently, STEM educational indices in Brazil.
At 14, I won my first medal at a Scientific Olympiad; at 16, I started lecturing about scientific opportunities; at 17, I won my first hackathon and developed my first startup; at 18, I already impacted thousands of children throughout my educational NGO. I unified science with entrepreneurship and innovation to democratize qualitative education for all underprivileged Brazilian students who struggle in school, as my sister once did.
As the cofounder, I gave lectures in more than 100 classrooms, designed the branding and website, in addition to developing an app to raise awareness of the extensive number of scientific opportunities that exist in Brazil. We recruited over 50 volunteers and impacted over 5,000 underprivileged Brazilian students, democratizing qualitative science and leadership education and reducing school dropout rates. Lastly, we organized an in-person Hackathon to encourage mainly students from public schools to create technological and innovative solutions on the theme “accessibility of education for vulnerable populations.” We got approximately R$10,000.00 in sponsorship and partnered with major TV channels, national companies, and international institutions, such as TV Thathi, LALA, Educacross, and InovAction.
At my first Hackathon, I cocreated Younify: a platform in Python to automate the government housing process. The platform aimed to prevent rework. With our solution, public servants would not have to manually register data in a spreadsheet. Additionally, our platform would unify all spreadsheets in a Cloud system so that everyone can access all the data at any time. We got first place, winning R$5,000.00 and the opportunity to incubate the startup with the support of the Government of Guarulhos.
I worked in partnership with NASA, MCTI, and IASC, using the PANSTARRS-1 and PANSTARRS-2 telescopes to find unknown asteroids in the deep sky. I found three preliminary asteroids and went to Brasilia - the federal capital of Brazil - to receive my honor. The asteroids I found can be recognized worldwide by the International Astronomical Union.
Since I was young, I was curious about the universe. I questioned, for example, why steel is hotter than plastic when both are in the sun: I did not even know what physics was about. Subsequently, I brought my incessant questions into the classroom, and their final destination was the Scientific Olympiads, where I found a playground to deeply explore my vast interest about the universe. Since 9th grade, I studied advanced science and mathematics subjects to participate in national and international Olympiads. I won approximately 12 medals and was invited to the IOAA & OLAA Team Brazil Student Selection (~top 0.04% of 800,000+ students).