* BSc. (Mar 93 - Dec 97) - Universidade Federal Fluminense - Physics.
* MSc. (Mar 98 - Oct 99) - UFF - Physics, Statistical Physics.
* PhD. (Nov.99 - Jan.02) - UFF - Physics, Statistical Physics.
* Postdoctoral research associate (Feb. 02 - April 02), CBPF , at Constantino Tsallis' group.
* Postdoctoral research associate (May 02 - Nov. 05), University of Notre Dame, prof. László Barabási's group.
* Visiting Professor (Jan. 05 - Aug. 05), UFF, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
* Associate Professor (Dec. 06- ), IF-UFF, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I have been introduced to the fascinating field of statistical mechanics of complex systems at the beginning of my undergrad years. I have learned many interesting problems like the traveling salesman problem, memory storage and retrieval in attractor neural networks, complex networks and their emergence in nature and others. Some of these studies resulted in publications (Citations can be found at Web of Science with search entry de menezes ma OR demenezes ma OR de menezes maf - 287 citations in 05/2009).

You can find my CV here.

I have recently switched interests to the study of topology, dynamics and optimality of transportation networks. With Ernesto Galvão I am also studying some properties of formal systems, more specifically creating algorithms for finding distinct grammars that generate the same language.

The key ideas and tools to study such phenomena are the concepts of universality and the statistical analysis of toy models.

My latter works have been done in collaboration with Alexei Vazquez A.-L. Barabási T.J.P. Penna (Msc and Phd Advisor). Cristian F. Moukarzel (PhD Advisor) A.R. Lima

I have also worked with Ronald Dickman on the study of critical phenomena in nonequilibrium systems (as an old-style guy, he does not have a webpage).

You can find here, in pdf or gzipped ps, a copy of my master thesis. It concerns the use of pseudo-chaotic cellular automata as an image preprocessor for attractor neural networks and the proposal of a new dynamics that improves the Hopfield-Tank approach for solving the traveling salesman problem. My PhD thesis, downloadable in pdf or gzipped ps, is mainly divided in two parts. One deals with small-world networks, its geometric properties and critical behavior of the average shortest-path length near zero dilution. There we prove that the transition from regular to random behavior is first order at zero dilution. The second part of the thesis deals with nonequilibrium phase transitions, a lattice model of structural rigidity and a translation of the latter problem onto a reaction-diffusion one.

You can also take a look at my list of publications . All articles will soon be available for download.

- Semana da Física 2009: Mini-tutorial "Ferramentas de Computação em Física"
- Thermodynamics: Maxwell construction and the Van der Waals equation
- Listas de Exercícios (02/2009)
* Primeira lista
* Segunda Lista

Horace Silver Quintet w/ Billy Cobham 1968

Mahavishnu Orchestra live 1972 @ Syracuse University (Things get vicious at 23:00) John McLaughlin - guitars, Billy Cobham - drums Rick Laird - bass Jan Hammer - keys, Jerry Goodman - violin.