“I know how powerful it can be to see your story reflected in others.”
Brazilian undergraduate Leonardo Alixandrino is talking about his experience as a first-generation student. It’s a role whose attendant responsibilities – in his words, of “showing other first-generation students that their stories matter, that they do belong, and that their voices can help transform communities” – he takes very seriously.
The 24-year-old’s soft-spoken demeanour belies a resolve that has already seen him overcome enormous odds and now finds him setting his sights on goals with global implications.
Alixandrino grew up in Capão Redondo, a favela in sprawling southwestern São Paulo.
“In the ’90s, the United Nations called it one of the most dangerous places in the world,” he said. “Even today, it remains a place that faces many challenges, including violence and drug trafficking. But the funny thing is that growing up, I never really noticed those challenges. When it’s your everyday environment, it’s just the thing that you know.”
An auspicious development for Alixandrino came in 2012.
“I was 11, and at my middle school they organized a science fair,” he recounted. “That was a very rare thing at that time. I decided to enter. My grandmother had died of gallbladder cancer, so the goal of my project was to cure cancer.”
So driven was Alixandrino to succeed at the fair that he reached out all the way across his vast native city to a professor at the University of São Paulo, two hours away by public transit. (He was 11, don’t forget.) Rather remarkably, the professor was responsive.
“He said ‘Let’s have a meeting. I can answer your questions.’ Visiting the campus for the first time, seeing what was happening there – people in lab coats and so on – for the first time I thought, ‘Okay, maybe this place is for me.’”
Fast-forward several years and Alixandrino was informed by that same professor/mentor of a federal scholarship opportunity; he applied for it and won. In a country of roughly 240 million people, fewer than a hundred such scholarships were being awarded annually.
“(The scholarship) meant that I could have a project, and I could conduct research in a lab,” he said, still sounding amazed. “It was a life-changer, the spark I needed in order to develop my dreams.”
He was also learning the value of networking. In 2019 came an especially fruitful connection with a prominent visiting scientist. Dr. George Zogopoulos, taken with the young Brazilian’s talent and energy, suggested Alixandrino come to Montreal to spend four months as a trainee researcher at the McGill-affiliated Goodman Cancer Institute. Once the necessary funding was secured, he made the trip.
“It was an amazing opportunity,” Alixandrino said. “And I fell in love with Montreal.”
Now, as Alixandrino nears the completion of his bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Physiology, he can look back on several years of undergraduate studies at McGill interspersed with internships at international institutes, focused mostly on pancreatic cancer research. It was during one such trip, at the University of St Andrew’s in Scotland in 2020, that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic obliged visiting students to go home, an unexpected turn that brought about a mid-stream rethink in his career direction.
“It was like the universe was trying to tell me something,” he said. “My ambition had always been to be a medical doctor, but I began to think that I could make a broader impact by doing work that has a more political dimension.”
For Alixandrino, the change has meant transitioning from lab-based research to field-based, and in his case the field has been broad indeed. His current focus is digital health: briefly, the integration of digital technology and tools into all aspects of health care. Alixandrino has been getting in on the ground floor of a burgeoning field where need often far outstrips infrastructure and supply, especially in the developing world. Under the supervision of professors Belinda Nicolau and Rohinton Medhora, he currently has a central role in an ambitious project interviewing high-level policymakers across Latin America, with the aim of closing that gap. The future looks enticingly open, and he now finds himself with sufficient research fodder that, for his next academic step, he hopes to do a PhD.
Alixandrino is ultimately determined to take what he learns and invest it back into his communities, from Capão Redondo to all points outward. When, in response to a question about goals, he mentions that he would like to be head of the World Health Organization or the Minister of Health of Brazil someday, you don’t doubt his sincerity. (He has also said that he would like to be Brazil’s first Nobel Prize winner in Physiology/Medicine. A long shot? Maybe. But only a fool would bet against him.)
With the hindsight he has accrued since that 2012 epiphany, then, what would Alixandrino say to a young, intellectually curious person living in circumstances where role models are at a premium – someone who, in short, reminds him a lot of his 11-year-old self?
“I’d say: dream big. Even when you feel afraid or out of place, keep going. Where you come from doesn’t limit where your dreams can take you.”