[{"jcr:title":"Insper joins international innovation network with university in Ireland","cq:tags_0":"area-de-conhecimento:tecnologia","cq:tags_1":"area-de-conhecimento:engenharia","cq:tags_2":"area-de-conhecimento:ciência-da-computação","cq:tags_3":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper","cq:tags_4":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/internacional"},{"richText":"With support from Women in Action, students joined multicultural teams in the SUGAR program, working on challenges related to urban mobility and healthcare","authorDate":"16/04/2026 10h14","madeBy":"Por","tag":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/internacional","title":"Insper joins international innovation network with university in Ireland","variant":"imagecolor"},{"jcr:title":"transparente - turquesa - vermelho"},{"themeName":"transparente - turquesa - vermelho"},{"containerType":"containerTwo"},{"jcr:title":"Grid Container Section","layout":"responsiveGrid"},{"text":"Insper is once again participating this year in the SUGAR Network, an international academic innovation network that connects universities, students, and organizations to develop solutions for real-world problems. Following its first experience in 2025, the school is now involved in two projects, both carried out in partnership with Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, bringing together students from Insper, the University of São Paulo (USP), and the Irish university. The participation of Insper students was made possible with support from Women in Action, a program focused on empowering women and expanding their presence in areas such as technology, innovation, and business. The initiative involved Professors Maria Alice Gonzales, Luiz Fernando Durão, and Filipi Tieppo, as well as the participation of Professor Mauricio Bouskela. Four Insper students took part in this year’s edition, divided into two teams. One group worked on a challenge related to large-scale crowd logistics at events, considering impacts on pedestrian flow, traffic, and parking. The other focused on a project developed in partnership with Johnson & Johnson. "SUGAR" stands for Stanford University Global Alliance for Redesign. Created in 2011, the network was inspired by a course offered at Stanford University and now operates independently, promoting interdisciplinary and multicultural projects over the course of an academic year. Academic and cultural exchange According to Maria Alice, one of the program’s main differentiators is placing students in direct contact with real problems, real stakeholders, and tight deadlines to test and validate ideas. The projects began in October 2025 with online meetings and moved into an in-person phase in January 2026, when Brazilian students traveled to Dublin. In March, Irish students came to São Paulo to continue developing the proposals. In the project focused on mobility, called ClearWay, participants included Laura Tovo, in her eighth semester of Mechatronics Engineering, and Lara Christine Vasconcelos, in her fifth semester of Computer Engineering. For Laura, exposure to a different academic culture was one of the most significant aspects of the experience. “Being exposed to the university mindset in Ireland helped me put my own course in Brazil into perspective — how we prototype things and how they do it there,” she says. She also highlights that the experience went beyond academics: “Today, the students from Ireland are close friends of mine.” Lara emphasizes the cultural immersion provided by the exchange. “When we visited them, we were able to see Ireland from a more local perspective,” she says. “They took us to places frequented by residents, so we experienced daily life, not just tourist spots.” According to her, this close interaction helped her better understand habits and forms of interaction that are quite different from those in Brazil. On the academic side, Laura highlights the program’s methodology, which encourages teams to first imagine bold solutions and then refine them into more viable proposals. “Our main challenge was figuring out how to engage people in organizing events and improving traffic flow, both in parking areas and around event venues,” she explains. Lara, in turn, emphasizes the challenge of building consensus within a large, multicultural team working in a second language. “There were many people involved in the project, so aligning everyone’s ideas to reach a final product was difficult,” she says. “And on top of that, we had to discuss everything in English.” Healthcare and data analysis In the team working with Johnson & Johnson, participants included Juliana Parraga, a student in Insper’s Master in Business Management (MBM), and Yamandú Germano Cavalcanti, an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering. Juliana was the only graduate student from Insper participating in the program this year. According to Juliana, the team initially went through an intensive research phase to better understand the pharmaceutical market and the company’s operations. “At the beginning, the goal was to understand the market, especially the pharmaceutical sector, which was unfamiliar to most of the team,” she explains. From there, the group began developing solutions to improve data collection and analysis methodologies. For Juliana, the experience was particularly valuable because it allowed her to apply course content in practice while expanding her professional perspective. “As an MBM student, I felt I wanted to do something more hands-on and take full advantage of what Insper offers,” she says. She also sees direct connections between the project and her work in data. “One of the reasons I was so interested in joining this project was the opportunity to see how other companies work with this type of information,” she adds. Women in focus The gender dimension appears in different ways in the students’ accounts. Laura notes that the program’s impact goes beyond the project topic, as it also creates space for women to participate in environments that are still predominantly male. “In the group we worked with in Ireland, all our teammates were men. So there’s a strong chance that, without Women in Action, there wouldn’t have been any women participating in this initiative,” she says. Lara relates the importance of the initiative to her own experience in a male-dominated program. She notes that, at times during her undergraduate studies, she felt she needed to make a greater effort to be heard. “Sometimes I feel like my opinion is harder to be taken into account,” she says. “It feels like I need to try a bit harder to have my voice heard.” In the accounts of Laura, Lara, and Juliana, participation in SUGAR emerges not only as an international academic experience, but as an opportunity to expand perspectives, build confidence, and engage with real-world challenges in a global innovation environment."},{"jcr:title":"ClearWay team visits Dublin’s traffic control center","fileName":"Equipe Clearway visita ao centro de controle de trânsito de Dublin.jpeg","alt":"ClearWay team visits Dublin’s traffic control center"}]