TARCISIO B. CELESTINO | INTERVIEW


arcisio B. Celestino began his career in tunneling, as did so many, as a civil engineer. “But even though I graduated


from the University of Sao Paulo Polytechnic School – which is one of the best, if not the best of the, engineering schools in Brazil – I had never heard about tunneling on my course. Mine was not the only engineering school which did not teach about tunneling. Very many engineering schools around the world do not teach it. And that is a problem that I would come back to later in my career, because addressing it became a mission for me when I was ITA President (2016-2019). His first involvement with tunneling did


not come until about second to third year in his engineering career. “I was working on the water conveyance


system for the city of Sao Paulo. Before then I had only worked on dam design, but I was really attracted by the work in tunneling. I had a very good mentor in my company at that time, which I am glad about; and, shortly after that I went to Berkeley for my Ph.D. where I had a formal education under Tor Brekke. A Norwegian, he had been professor at the University of Trondheim (NTNU) before Berkley. I am very proud to have been his student.” Brekke, who died in 2009, was a


renowned tunneler and teacher, and many of his students hold him in similar regard. “Even there, though, my Ph.D. did not


deal with tunnels specifically; it was on rock mechanics. But after that I came back to Brazil and I have always been involved with one or more tunneling projects ever since. I have worked or been a consultant on projects in Brazil, across South America, and all over the world. So I have been around many projects internationally. “In addition to my career as an engineer,


I am a professor at University of Sao Paulo. I am not full time but I hold responsibilities related to both teaching and research. “I was very fortunate to be invited for


this position because it’s actually a very nice blend. The rest of the time I work for Themag Engenharia Ltda., which is a major consulting company in Brazil. I am involved with designs of non-conventional work, so there is a blend of research in my work there also. I take subjects from real designs for the company to research at the university, and vice versa: we can apply results to real projects. And that has worked very well. When I joined the university it had no research department for underground works


but I created once. I have been supervising quite a few Ph.D. and Masters students on tunneling, and that has been rewarding. “The Masters program here is much more


research oriented than it is, for example, in the United States. In Brazil, the program involves a thesis, and therefore a level of research. Actually, some of the Masters programs that I supervised have resulted in publications in journals. So I feel that is part of the return I get from my work. “As well as my involvement with the


University of Sao Paulo, I am co-supervisor of a Ph.D. program at Purdue University in the US. The main supervisor is Professor Antonio Bobet, whom I met a long time ago; it works very well. “That mix of academic and commercial


work suits me – doing practical work to see a project through and also helping others to research. The academic position also creates some kind of visibility which work at the company does not necessarily provide. “I can give an example. I got a phone


call a couple of weeks ago from a former student of mine who teaches at another Brazilian university. His assignments are to do with tunneling techniques, safety, and so on, but he has also very interesting projects related to unconventional views of underground space. “There are some former amethyst mines


in the south of Brazil. The amethyst is found in basalt lava flows, and it was mined not by large companies but, as I understand it, by individual miners working on their own. The amethyst mines are now exhausted and the miners have gone, but they left behind the underground spaces which they created and which you might expect to be abandoned. But this is in an urban environment and someone had the idea of


using that underground space. So now they have wine cellars in them, they have fancy stores, they have restaurants. The galleries were excavated from a scarp horizontally, so the access is very easy. An enquiry came to his former student


because someone asked: ‘is this safe?’ “It was not designed for the public, for


people who are not miners, who are not trained in looking at the roof to see whether or not there is an instability. So he was called in to advise, and he in turn called me,” Celestino says. “I have not visited it yet but I am very happy to have been asked and I shall probably get involved in this. “I would never have got that invitation if


I had only been working for the company. It was only because he was one of my former Ph.D. students that he called me. There have been many situations like that. There are non-academic opportunities that open because of my academic career. “In my non-academic career I am


responsible for the areas of Geotechnical Engineering, Engineering Geology and Transportation Engineering at Themag Engenharia. The consulting company was created more than 60 years ago, in fact, to specialize in designs for hydroelectric plants. This was the time when big power plants were beginning to be constructed in Brazil; there had been small ones before then but when major scaling up began this company was created, and it became quite big in the area of hydroelectric plant design. It actually holds the world record of being the company that designed the greatest amount of generating power at the same time – 27,000 MW. Nowadays, the company works in all areas of infrastructure design, not only on hydro plants but also metro systems, highways and so on.


Above: Tarcisio B. Celestino was ITA President, 2016-2019 Winter 2023 | 23


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