Alumni Talk with Prof Dr-Ing Enzo Morosini Frazzon
What did the University of Bremen mean for your subsequent career? That’s a question our one-hour Alumni Talks are here to answer. In January, the one doing the answering was Enzo Frazzon, who came to Bremen from Brazil in 2006 to do his doctorate. He then worked as a scientist at BIBA (Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik). His connection with Bremen and the university is still very close today, both academically and personally. He is now Professor of Logistics at the Department of Production Engineering at the University of Santa Catarina in the southern Brazilian port city of Florianopolis and is also a Research Ambassador for the University of Bremen. The Hanseatic city has become a second home for Frazzon’s family of four, who like to spend time together exploring the city and its surroundings by bike. Frazzon brought that experience into his Alumni Talk presentation, delivered in the form of a faithfully detailed cycling tour map – a logistician through and through.
Frazzon is back for an extended stay in Germany as a Georg Foster visiting scientist at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which through its research fellowships supports exceptionally qualified researchers from developing and newly industrialising countries whose work contributes to achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. That is exactly what Frazzon is doing, researching the sustainability of supply chains and the corresponding global transfer of knowledge, particularly to Brazil and Latin America.
Frazzon’s first contact with Germany came after he finished his engineering degree, when he started working for large German companies in Brazil. This is where the plan to get his doctorate in Germany was born. Bremen quickly made it onto the shortlist and then when the university made it clear that it was very interested in this doctoral student from Brazil and would do a lot to support him locally, the decision to come here was not a difficult one. "To this day, I think it's something quite special that Uni Bremen's research and teaching relates so strongly to the city it’s part of and is really tightly networked with Bremen’s economy and society," said Frazzon at the Alumni Talk.
This network also includes international relationships, which were further cultivated during the panel discussion. There was a reunion with a Chinese alumna who worked with Frazzon at FB 4 Production Engineering and BIBA and is now interested in further dialogue, for example on the digital transformation in engineering, a scientific topic close to Frazzon's heart. This will require a new generation of engineers who not only need first-rate expertise but also – essential nowadays – communicative competence and human qualities such as empathy and creativity. That Enzo Frazzon could be a good role model for these young engineers was, by the end of the Alumni Talk, more than apparent.