Physician Roberto Medronho is elected rector of UFRJ – 04/28/2023 – Education

With 29.4% of votes, the ‘UFRJ for All’ ticket, led by epidemiologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine Roberto Medronho, won the election to the university’s rectory. The dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, Cássia Turci, will be vice-rector. They will serve their mandate from July 2023 to July 2027.

The public consultation made to the university community throughout the week. The counting of votes began on the morning of this Friday (28). Until publication, only separate votes remained. However, mathematically there is no way to reverse the result, which considers the votes from the 96 electronic ballot boxes and those obtained by the UFRJ E-voting System.

The ticket ‘Redesigning UFRJ’, headed by historian and dean of the Center for Philosophy and Human Sciences Vantuil Pereira, and Katya Gualter, from EEFD (School of Physical Education and Sports), obtained 18.5% of the votes. With this ticket, in 102 years, for the first time, a black man and woman ran for president of the university.

The election still registered 75 blank votes and 181 null.

Medronho was director of the Faculty of Medicine between 2011 and 2020 and coordinated the Group of work to face Covid-19 at UFRJ.

“One of the objectives is the policy of disseminating science that saves lives and combating the denialism that reigned in recent years. We also want the various published articles to generate patents and products for society”, he says.

For Medronho, one of the challenges of his management will be to include, respect and maintain within the university “those who social and cultural disparities insist on excluding and repelling. Our action plan is to strengthen UFRJ and guarantee quality and greatness, adjectives of its great history”, he says.

“Cassia and I are very happy. We are committed to working on behalf of UFRJ and society, living up to the university’s history of protagonism in science, technology, health, arts, humanities and basic research.”