Hi!

I’m Rafael dos Santos, I’m 29 years old and I am from Brazil.

I’m currently in my 4th semester of the master’s degree program called EMIMEO. Before that, I studied electrical engineering in Brazil for 5 years at the Federal University of Campina Grande. My minor there was in telecommunications. During my bachelor’s degree I had the opportunity to work with different communication technologies and also to do an exchange program between Brazil and France called BRAFITEC. After spending a year in France for the first time, I became determined to return, and thus began the EMIMEO story.

Before that, after my graduation, I worked for almost two years in an R&D company in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. During that time a lot of things happened (2019-2021…) and I had the feeling that it was about time to return to the old continent.

Finally, I found the EMIMEO program and applied for it with a super straightforward process by sending all the documentation, going through a technical interview and here I am!

EMIMEO’s first semester was in Limoges (France), and it was challenging to pick up my French back almost 4 years after my last contact with the language. There I met a lot of new friends from all around the world. The second semester was in Brescia (Italy) during summer and a lot of sun. For the third semester, I decided to go to Bilbao (Spain) because of my previous RF background and everything thus far was amazing but the best was my internship in the last semester in Toulouse (France).

Intake 3 in our first Secret Santa (December/2021).

Like I’ve said before, I have lived in France for one year and the city was Toulouse. So, since the beginning of the master, the main objective was to come back and live here. Toulouse is a great city to be an engineer because of the amount of opportunities in the most various domains and as a Brazilian there is a huge community here where we can feel a little bit closer to home.

Me and La Ville Rose (Toulouse – France)

I did my internship in a company called Infinite Orbits, which is a new space company providing in-orbit services to satellite operators all over the world and a business-driven approach to traditional life extension in GEO. The company supports its customers in their fleet management from frequency application and inspection to life-extension. In April 2023, we launched our first satellite. Check it out here:

https://www.infiniteorbits.io/post/launched

It was a great experience similar to what I had at the beginning of EMIMEO. Here at IO, there are 19 different nationalities from all over the world, and the spoken language is English with some lunches in French just to keep practising it.

Part of Infinite Orbits crew and the satellite mockup in the middle.

Initially, I was hired as the RADAR expert to develop a product for space application. However, things change fast in the industrial field, and right now I am working more with applied Computer Vision with Active Sensors for Space. This was a decision made during the first month of the project, and it was a desire on my part. Both of my tutors agreed with this modification.

This was a very challenging project, and I learned new things every day. Last week was the last week of my internship with a final presentation, and everything went super well and we are very happy with the achieved results. In the future, I will keep working at IO on different projects and I am super excited about what is coming!

Overall, I am very glad with the experience I had here, with all the amazing people I met on this journey and with all the things I am learning. I am pretty sure this internship was only successful due to all the knowledge acquired during my master’s degree.