José Edson Sampaio, Postdoctoral Researcher at BCAM between 2018 and 2020, receives the prestigious Brazilian Mathematics Society Award SBM 2025

• The awarded article, “Moderately Discontinuous Homology”, was published in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, co-authored with Sonja Heinze (ICMAT), Javier Fernández de Bobadilla (BCAM) and María Pe Pereira (Complutense University of Madrid). 
• This research was carried out at BCAM, formed part of Sonja Heinze's thesis, and took place during Edson Sampaio's postdoctoral period in Bilbao. In fact, this was one of the first results of the research group, which had just been formed at BCAM at the time.  

José Edson Sampaio, postdoctoral researcher at BCAM between 2018 and 2020, has been awarded the SBM 2025 Award, given every two years by the Brazilian Mathematical Society (SBM) to the best original research article recently published by a young researcher residing in Brazil. The award evaluates criteria such as originality, relevance, depth, and potential impact in the field.

Sampaio is currently an Assistant Professor at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), where he is a member of the Singularities research group and a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). He has distinguished himself through his work in Lipschitz Geometry and Metric Topology.

The awarded article, “Moderately Discontinuous Homology”, was published in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, co-authored with Sonja Heinze (ICMAT), Javier Fernández de Bobadilla (BCAM) and María Pe Pereira (Complutense University of Madrid). In this work, the authors introduce Moderately Discontinuous Homology (MD Homology), a new homology theory that captures metric phenomena with greater sensitivity than classical Poincaré homology..

“Previous theories only worked with geodesic distance. MD Homology works with many other distances while still satisfying fundamental properties such as homotopy invariance and the Mayer-Vietoris theorem,” explains Sampaio. According to the researcher, one of the main achievements of the work was demonstrating that this new homology can detect singularities in complex analytic sets.

Regarding receiving the award, Sampaio commented: "It has been an honour. This recognition has profound meaning for me and my career. This award represents the validation of years of hard work, dedication and passion. It is recognition that the hours invested, the challenges overcome and the constant commitment have had a significant impact. Personally, it drives me to continue exploring, learning and pushing my limits. It also reminds me of the importance of innovation and continuous improvement. Furthermore, I hope that this recognition will serve as inspiration to others in our field, helping to open doors, start conversations and foster curiosity in future generations."

As mentioned above, ‘Moderately Discontinuous Homology’ is the result of joint research between Sonja Heinze, Maria Pe Pereira, Edson Sampaio, and Javier Fernández de Bobadilla. This research was carried out at BCAM, formed part of Sonja Heinze's thesis, and took place during Edson Sampaio's postdoctoral period in Bilbao. In fact, this was one of the first results of the research group, which had just been formed at BCAM at the time.  

The co-authors also celebrate the award as recognition of their joint effort.

María Pe Pereira emphasizes that "developing a mathematical theory like this is very rewarding; it’s like inventing a new language that allows us to describe things in a more transparent way, metric degenerations in this case, so that one can better understand the connections to other phenomena."

Sonja Heinze shares: "For me, this award is a beautiful recognition of the joint effort we made in that work. I have very fond memories of those times. It’s wonderful that all those hours we spent together at the BCAM blackboards, and all that work—fun but also challenging—have been recognized."

Javier Fernández de Bobadilla states: “My memories of this research are very gratifying: gradually, we refined and discovered a theory that now seems to be shaping up as the ‘standard algebraic topology’ for dealing with metric aspects of singularities. The fact that the Brazilian Mathematical Society awarded Edson as a co-author of the paper is an immense joy for him and a recognition of the impact of this work.”

Brief CV of the authors

José Edson Sampaio is an Assistant Professor at UFC, with complete training in Mathematics and a postdoctoral fellowship at BCAM. He has also worked at IFCE and CENTEC, and has additional training in Software Development.

María Pe Pereira holds a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid (2011), has been a visiting researcher in Lille, Paris, and IMPA, and received the José Luis Rubio de Francia Award (2013). She resolved the Nash conjecture on arc spaces together with Javier Fernández de Bobadilla and actively participates in outreach and mathematics Olympiads.

Sonja Heinze completed her undergraduate and master’s studies in Germany, and her PhD in Spain in singularity theory. She currently works in the software industry in France, while maintaining connections to topics related to homotopy.

Javier Fernández de Bobadilla is an Ikerbasque Research Professor at BCAM and a member of the Singularity Theory and Algebraic Geometry group. His research spans the geometry and topology of algebraic varieties, singularities, degenerations, Lipschitz geometry, Hodge theory, intersection cohomology, and symplectic topology.

The entire BCAM research team congratulates José Edson Sampaio on this award and extends their congratulations to all co-authors. Congratulations and here’s to many more successes!