Guilherme Bozetti: a Brazilian sedimentologist

From his BSc in southern Brazil to his PhD in north-eastern Scotland (2005-2017)

Guilherme Bozetti is a Brazilian Associate Professor (Maître de Conférences) who has been teaching and researching sedimentology at Unistra since September 2020. He is responsible for both BSc and MSc classroom and field sedimentary geology disciplines.

Originally from Porto Alegre, he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Geology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. After the first two years of his five-year long degree, Guilherme, who wanted to have an international career to experience different cultures and conduct research in pioneering regions of the world, knew he had to learn English, which is why he went to London in 2007. After rising to the position of Assistant Manager in a bar in the English capital, he ultimately took the decision to go back to Porto Alegre and finished his degree in 2011.

“In London, I was washing dishes, I was collecting glasses.”

Thanks to a partnership program between the UK and Brazil (BG Brasil Fellowship and Science Without Borders), Guilherme Bozetti was selected as the first among five students to be offered a fully-funded, four-year scholarship for a PhD at the University of Aberdeen in the UK. Due to administrative delay, he took the exam to enrol in the MSc in Geology at his home university for 10 months and started his time in Aberdeen in October 2012. The presence of renowned professors, with whom he later got to work and co-author papers with, motivated Guilherme to go to Aberdeen specifically. His thesis delved into stratigraphy and deep-marine systems of the Cretaceous in southern Chile. It was during that time that he was gifted a “Rock God” plaque by his step-daughter. He later defended his PhD on the deep-water system within the Cretaceous Cerro Toro formation in 2017. Once Brexit happened, combined with a mishap in his application, it took over a year for his Visa to be accepted. This meant he was extremely limited in his work opportunities. Due to the strenuous situation, he almost missed his own PhD defence and the birth of his daughter. He admits it was “quite difficult” at the time for a “non-British [person] to apply for anything over in the UK”. He thought it may have been time to leave the UK.

The journey to the East (2018-2020)

He did his PhD alongside Chinese people and when a postdoc opportunity arose in 2018 in China, he knew “it was a good move”. He became a postdoctoral researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen and focused on Triassic deep-lacustrine sedimentology in northern China. The position was closely linked with industry demands as it was sponsored by PetroChina. Although the research focus was different than during his PhD, there were similarities. As such, “it was kind of not too difficult to navigate between the two of them”. During a meeting in China with a sedimentology colleague from Strasbourg, he was informed of the opening of an MCF (associate professor) position at Unistra.

Here in Strasbourg and Baku (2020-present)

He has been a Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) ever since September 2020. Initially planning on continuing to work on deep-water, maybe marine systems, due to their presence in the French and Swiss Alps, COVID and the frequent lockdowns at the time restricted him to work locally, on continental deposits. He has namely been researching the Buntsandstein sandstone in the Vosges.

As a researcher, he is part of ITES (Earth & Environment Institute of Strasbourg) UMR7063, in the Geological Systems team. Having passed his HDR (ability to supervise research), Guilherme supervises PhDs within that research area at Unistra. His interest in deep-water sedimentology never wavered so he has been satiating it by co-supervising a PhD on turbidites at the University of Bern since 2025 and will be researching the Gault and the Saluver formations in Switzerland as well. As a teacher, he is responsible for all the Bachelor- and Master-level sedimentology lectures and field classes at the University of Strasbourg. Additionally, he also teaches sedimentology within lecture halls and through field trips to Bachelor and Master students at UFAZ (French-Azerbaijani University), a university, with the Unistra's academic oversight, located in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

The difficulties he has faced in his career

Guilherme has tailored his skillset to operate in both academia and industry. Regarding sedimentology, that is the oil industry. It was however going through a recession since 2014 and still was when he defended his thesis. As such, layoffs were happening across the sector, which meant a pathway for Geology students was drying up. Therefore, people decided to prolong their studies, do a PhD, a postdoc to wait for the industry to bounce back, which is what Guilherme Bozetti chose to and had to do. Prof. Bozetti has also faced a few administrative difficulties in his career, especially as a field teacher-researcher regarding the inflexibility of hotel booking declarations, trip planning, and reimbursement delays. “At the end of the day, you do everything digitally but you still have to find someone to talk to when the time comes”. Depending on opening hours, that may prove to be difficult. Additionally, a time-consuming task of a professor is obtaining funding to conduct research, as Guilherme Bozetti puts it: “A lot of the times you realise, you’re spending more time asking the money and justifying what you’ve done with the money than actually doing the research”.

Within academia, Prof. Bozetti identifies the first hurdle as getting a postdoc position due to the drop in the number of opportunities between the PhD offers and the “restricted world of the postdocs” and due to the change in work environment in going from doing a PhD within a research team, which limits the research freedom one can have, to a postdoc where you can hold “a lot more freedom” and flexibility in regards to the research project. Another “huge step” was the transition from postdoctoral research to the first professorship position as he then had newer responsibilities that were added to his tasks. Some teaching can be done as a PhD candidate and a postdoc researcher, whereas a professor needs to plan all of his courses, teaching activities and field trips. He received help from his family and was able to focus on his work due to the COVID situation pandemic at the time. He worked for over 4 years to get his HDR certification in order to be able to supervise PhD students on his own without “needing someone to sign or answer on [his] behalf” and while teaching has allowed him to bring bright students into his research, it has also drawn him away from his research as he cannot focus solely on it. Regarding PhD candidates, finding the right one can be tricky since Prof. Bozetti might not have appropriate funding and in other cases, he might have the necessary funding but no matching candidate.

What he enjoys as a researcher, in France and at the (_University_of_Strasbourg_)__)_))

As a researcher, he loves “questions that don’t have easy answers” and he loves “the human interaction”. Research brings those two aspects together since he is able to “sit around the table and discuss for two, three hours or even longer sometimes about very specific subjects because you and the people around the table share the same passion”. Witnessing the progress made as a research team feels like a great payoff to Prof. Bozetti for all the effort made.

“France is quite amazing in that you are pretty much free to develop your work in any way that you want without having a massive pressure for acquiring financial support or publishing data that sometimes is not ready to be published”. For Guilherme, this feels different than other places he has done research at as he had seen many people having to publish papers prior to their actual completion which left them unsatisfied with their own work and always running behind schedule due to the deliverables. ”Over in France, we can publish something when it’s ready”. In the end, he regards the work done being the same as elsewhere without the inherent pressure of publishing deadlines. “That’s a huge positive influence”.

At Unistra, “one of the most special things is that in our department and in our team we have pretty close relationships”, which tremendously helps in terms of teambuilding, holistic approach and interdisciplinary thanks to the small size of the Geological systems team and the department.

His advice for early-career researchers

“Get a plan A and just follow plan A. Always have a plan B but don’t consider plan B unless it’s extremely necessary”.

“Time is the essence of everything, so not wasting time is extremely important”. For PhD students, he advises to optimise the time when they are doing the research as he spent a lot of it learning and searching for things he ended up not using.

Be more selfish: “Work on your own work and publish more papers”.

Advertise yourself: It is as important as publishing your work. If you do not advertise yourself, you just get forgotten about.

Be connected: Go to events and conferences at least twice a year, so that you know what people have worked on and for people to know what you have. It is the best way to build strong relationships. That is vital, particularly when you want to become international.

PhD applications: Having references to distinguish yourself from other applicants. Having previously worked with a researcher that is on the team or with a researcher that knows the recruiter for the PhD you are applying for.