Sunset behind mountains in Rio de Janeiro with water reflection, Brazil

SIRIUS’ Collaboration with Brazil

Brazil is a country that faces very many of the energy and societal challenges that face Norway. For this reason, the University of Oslo has a well established program of collaboration with Brazilian companies and Universities. Based on this collaboration, SIU, the Centre for Educational Internationalisation has funded three projects that will support collaborative Masters’ projects with Brazilian companies and universities. INTERNABROAD allows students to pursue an industrial project with Petrobras’ Libra field development in Rio de Janeiro. UTFORSK and UTFORSK-CAPES finances exchange of M.Sc. students with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre.

INTERNABROAD: Industrial Masters’ Projects Related to the Libra Field Development Project

Libra is a demanding and high-profile oil and gas development project in Brazil’s Santos basin. The field is being developed by a consortium consisting of Petrobras, Total, Shell, CNOOC and CNPC. Petrobras is the field operator.

You can read more about Libra at:

Digitalisation of Libra

The field development project includes all areas of oil and gas production, from exploration and drilling through engineering to operations. This process involves use of large amounts of data spread across many hundreds of applications and databases. The Libra project team is working with Petrobras Research, Brazilian universities and the SIRIUS Centre to develop and apply computer science solutions to making this data more accessible and usable.

Internships

The Libra project will be working with the SIRIUS Centre to define up to six master’s projects in the period 2018-2020. We plan two groups of students, three starting in 2018 and three students starting in 2019.

The students who begin in 2018 will spend three months at the Libra project offices in the first half of 2019, while the students who begin in 2019 will spend three months in the last half of 2019.

Description of Projects

The projects will be in the broad area of energy industry digitalisation, with specific topics to be decided by the Libra project team and SIRIUS. Projects are open to M.Sc. candidates at the Department of Informatics or Department of Geosciences.

Study Programme

The student will be enrolled in a Masters’ programme in Geosciences or Informatics at the University of Oslo. The topic of the master’s thesis will be agreed between the student, the University of Oslo and the Libra project team. The thesis will be jointly supervised by personnel from the University of Oslo and the Libra project. For all projects, three months of the project time will be spent in Rio de Janeiro, working on the project as an intern in Petrobras’ offices. The rest of the project will be done in Oslo.
We plan to send the students to Rio de Janeiro in teams of three, working on related but distinct projects.

Practical Details

The internship program is financed by SIU. This means that during your stay in Rio de Janeiro you will receive a stipend of NOK 6000 per month as support for your stay in Rio de Janeiro. You will also receive a supplementary payment of NOK 13000 to cover the costs of insurance and secure accommodation in Rio de Janeiro. The University will also organise a cultural awareness seminar on living and working in Brazil.

The University will work with the Libra project team and the Norwegian Consulate in Rio de Janeiro to ensure that students will have a rewarding and secure stay in Brazil.

UTFORSK and UTFORSK/CAPES: Masters in Digital Geosciences in Collaboration with Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Digital Geosciences

The SIRIUS Centre at the University of Oslo and the Department of Informatics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) have set up a research and teaching collaboration in digital geosciences. At Oslo this is organised as a collaboration between the Department of Geosciences and Department of Informatics, while the work at UFRGS is organised in a group for Petroleum Informatics, headed by Professor Mara Abel. This initiative links on the work done around scalable data access in exploration done at both institutions into a initiative that will result in better ontologies and data access tools for geologists in universities and companies. The initiative is coordinated with and supported by Statoil and Petrobras.

Digital Geosciences Master’s Projects

As part of this collaboration, the University of Oslo has received financing for seven master’s projects in collaboration with UFRGS. Both of these projects include three month’s work on the project at the UFRGS in Porto Alegre.

Study Programme

The student will be enrolled in a Masters’ programme in Geosciences or Informatics at the University of Oslo. The topic of the master’s thesis will be agreed between the student, the University of Oslo and UFRGS. The thesis will be jointly supervised by personnel from the University of Oslo and UFRGS. For all projects, three months of the project time will be spent in Porto Alegre. The rest of the project will be done in Oslo.

Practical Details

The exchange program is financed by SIU. This means that during your stay in Porto Alegre you will receive a stipend of NOK 6000 per month as support for your stay in Rio de Janeiro. You will also receive a supplementary payment to cover the costs of insurance and secure accommodation in Porto Alegre. The University of Oslo will also organise a cultural awareness seminar on living and working in Brazil.

More information about UFRGS and Porto Alegre can be found at http://www.ufrgs.br/relinter/english

The University of Oslo has existing collaborations with UFRGS in the areas of Robotics and Pharmacology. This means that we can link prospective students to current and previous exchange students.

The University will work with UFRGS and the Norwegian Consulate in Rio de Janeiro to ensure that students will have a rewarding and secure stay in Brazil.