Coppe and Cefet students reach the Invent for the Planet 2025 finals
Planeta COPPE / Mechanical Engineering / News
Date: 25/02/2025

The Gaia team, composed of Coppe/UFRJ and Cefet-RJ students, was one of the seven teams selected for the final round of Invent for the Planet 2025 (IFTP 2025), a global challenge that seeks innovative solutions to improve the quality of life on our planet. IFTP brings together undergraduate, master’s and doctorate students from several Engineering areas to present, in 48 hours, technological proposals that shall positively impact the world.
This is the fourth year in which a Brazilian team has reached the finals of the world innovation marathon promoted by Texas A&M University, in the United States.
The Gaia team, winner of the local round, was selected during the first phase of the event, carried out between 7th and 9th of February at Cefet-RJ’s Maracanã campus. The team’s project seeks to mitigate the impacts of flooding in urban areas, a problem aggravated by climate change. The proposal consists of developing modules with a high capacity to drain rainwater, allowing the rapid creation of rain gardens in impermeable grounds, such as sidewalks.
The team is coordinated by professors Marcelo Savi, from Coppe, and Pedro Pacheco, from Cefet-RJ. In addition to both coordinators, the team is composed of: João Marins da Silva and Gabriel Ricardo Güntensperger Sousa (master’s and doctorate students, respectively, at Coppe’s Mechanical Engineering Program), Paulo Gustavo de Andrade Vasconcellos Luz (undergraduate student in Industrial Engineering at Cefet-RJ), Rogério Oliveira de Azevedo Júnior (master’s in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Technology, Cefet-RJ) and Yayenca Yllas Frachia (doctorate student in Science, Technology and Education, Cefet-RJ).
The IFTP 2025 winning team will be chosen between the 15th and 17th of April, at Texas A&M University, USA.
The seven IFTP 2025 finalist teams are:
- Agri-AI Team from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (USA)
- Aquarentures Team from Al Hussein Technical University (Jordan)
- Carbon Catch Team from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers (France)
- DeepBlue Team from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar)
- Gaia Team (Coppe/UFRJ and Cefet – Brazil)
- HydroShield Team fromTexas A&M University – College Station (USA)
- Iris Team from Atlantic Technological University (Ireland)
With information from the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Program – PEMM / Cefet-RJ.
- Innovation