The Laboratory of Studies on the Use and Quality of Systems (LUQS), at University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR), is celebrating 10 years in 2009. LUQS was the first computer science lab of the university and I was part of the research team in 2001, which is called today the first generation of young researchers. The picture below shows the initial team and how united we were.

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In this picture, I’m the one on the right with a blue shirt, a big smile and a young face of 22 years old. The head of the lab since its foundation is Elizabeth Furtado, right in the center of the picture, with a pink shirt, a long black hair and well protected by two big guys.

I started my academic life in that room with all those people. I was initially a volunteer, working during my free time between undergraduate classes. The kinds of computational problems that I faced there were so challenging and exciting that I decided to quit my job in a software company after two years of well paid work. My experience with research improved my reasoning capabilities and taught me a very important lesson:

“Every problem is solvable unless you give it up.”