On June 23, we celebrate International Women in Engineering Day, a date that recognizes the contribution of female professionals who drive innovation, push boundaries, and help build the future of the sector.

To mark the date, Sondotécnica spoke with Regina Ruschel, Coordinator of TechLab Academy, professor, researcher, and one of the leading Brazilian references in BIM. A pioneer in the introduction of CAD in civil engineering education and a protagonist in the dissemination of BIM in the country, Regina has closely followed some of engineering's major technological transformations over recent decades.

In the interview, she shares her vision on the evolution of the sector, the challenges of professional training, and the importance of female representation in building a more diverse and innovative engineering field. Check out the full interview:

How did your journey in engineering begin and what sparked your interest in the field?

I chose civil engineering inspired by a very dear uncle — my father's brother — a brilliant structural engineer, a strong, self-assured, and genuinely happy man. The fact that I loved drawing and had a natural knack for mathematics also played a part.

But the beginning wasn't simple. I graduated in 1981, right in the middle of a severe recession in Brazil. The market was stagnant, and if there was already a lack of openings for experienced engineers, imagine for someone who had just graduated—and on top of that, a young woman entering a male-dominated environment.

That was when I decided to take a bold step: pursuing a master's degree abroad in the field of Soil Mechanics. That choice changed everything. There I had my first contact with computing, something still very new at the time, and that experience ended up opening the doors to my first job when I returned to Brazil.

A turning point that began out of necessity, but ended up defining my entire trajectory.

Throughout your career, you have become one of the references in BIM in Brazil. At what point did you realize the potential of this methodology to transform the sector?

I have always been involved, almost organically, with digital transformation. My research project to join UNICAMP as a professor and researcher, back in 1986, already pointed in this direction: creating a graphical interface for truss calculation programs.

This adventure led me straight to CAD — I solved the problem by drawing the truss and automatically extracting its description. From this intense exposure to CAD and programming, we introduced CAD as a mandatory subject in the civil engineering degree.

We pioneered at UNICAMP in 1989, and I never limited myself to 2D: I taught students how to model in 3D and, from there, extract all the necessary representations.

My encounter with BIM came in 2001, when I got access to the first version of Revit right after its acquisition by Autodesk. But my entry into BIM was curious: I took the opposite path of the usual—first I plunged into collaboration, then into instrumentation.

I think I became a reference in BIM precisely because of this pioneering spirit in teaching and the constant choice to tread paths that were still little explored. I was attracted to new topics: augmented reality, component libraries for temporary construction elements, digital twins, natural language processing.

Deep down, I always sought out what had not yet been touched—and perhaps that is what guided my entire journey.

Being a pioneer in innovation requires vision and courage. What was it like to introduce concepts related to BIM at a time when the market was still maturing on the subject?

There was a period when I truly believed I would never see BIM actually happen in practice, being widely adopted. I felt very lonely on this journey. The student whom I taught BIM to during their undergraduate studies would end up “unlearning” it during their internship because the industry still operated on a different logic. The barriers were so numerous that, at times, I felt like an out-of-place dreamer, someone talking about the future when the present seemed to insist on being what was right.

But time, persistence, and—above all—the collective effort of multiple agents dedicated to dissemination turned the scenario around. Today BIM is an irreversible reality. There are still challenges, of course, but they are infinitely smaller than those at the beginning. And seeing this transformation happen before my eyes is, for me, one of the greatest rewards of this journey.

But since I never stop, and I have been finding wonderful opportunities to get involved in the transformations that artificial intelligence is bringing, I find myself once again in that place of a dreamer — only now in a different way.

It is a strange feeling, like standing before something huge that I can glimpse, but not fully reach. I can already see, even if blurrily, a future of singularity and profound changes in our industry and, above all, in education. And, once again, I am right there: restless, curious, a bit ungrounded... participating in this transformation.

In your view, what were the main changes that Brazilian engineering has experienced from the beginning of your career until today?

Look, thinking back to the 1980s, which was the decade I started my undergraduate studies, I can say that I've followed several cycles of change. When I started, everything was manual: calculations on a clipboard, drawings on tracing paper, and construction work was much more artisanal.

The arrival of the computer and CAD was a shock — suddenly, what used to take days began to take hours. Then came new materials, performance standards, sustainability entering through the front door... engineering grew more mature, more technical, more demanding. The construction site grew drier, smarter.

BIM came along and completely turned the tables: collaboration, informed models, simulations, multidisciplinary coordination. It was a silent yet profound revolution. And now we are experiencing another turning point, perhaps an even greater one: artificial intelligence.

TechLab Academy plays an important role in the dissemination of knowledge and innovation. How do you view this initiative within the context of the digital transformation of engineering?

I see the TechLab as the future of engineering—it builds this beautiful bridge between the digital process, which is more abstract, and the concrete world of construction and asset operation. That is precisely the path engineering needs to take.

Meanwhile, the Academy, which focuses on the dissemination of knowledge and innovation, is my biggest challenge today. I come from a very intense cycle, during which I developed a curriculum transformation protocol to include BIM and digitization in technical, engineering, and architecture training. This protocol matured, I facilitated its application in countless universities, and the protocol became public policy. It was a very special close to a cycle.

Now, I am entering a different kind of challenge: thinking about how to teach within the corporate universe, which needs to reinvent itself all the time without stopping what it is doing. It is an environment that requires constant updating, but cannot “pause” to learn. Then the big questions arise: how to engage, how to teach, and—perhaps the most important one—what to teach. It is new terrain, full of possibilities, and I am diving into it with the same curiosity that has always guided me—and, I swear, I already see paths.

What is the importance of continuous training for professionals who wish to work in an increasingly technological market?

Continuous training today is no longer optional — it is a must exactly. Knowledge evolves at an absurd speed, and we need to evolve right along with it. Of course, daily practice generates a lot of learning, but it can also make us complacent, always repeating the same solutions. That is why it is so important to step out of our comfort zone every now and then.

Learning to do things in a new way, experimenting, testing, making mistakes, adjusting… all of this keeps the mind alive and the profession vibrant. Innovating takes work, but standing still costs a lot more.

How do you evaluate the female presence in engineering today? Which advancements inspire you the most?

When I look back at my journey, I realize that I had practically no female role models at the beginning. My first female role model only appeared during my doctorate: Professor Claudia Bauzer, from Unicamp's Computer Science department, a specialist in Databases. Then came Doris Kowaltowski, my classmate at Unicamp, with whom I dove into CAD and the universe of research.

Before them, they were all men—my undergraduate professors, my master's professors, and even the person who inspired me to be an engineer. That was the landscape of the time.

And that is why it moves me so much to see the reality of today's young female architects and engineers. They have female role models, many of them, and that changes everything.

You can see the sense of belonging they carry: they simply are, occupying their space without asking permission. Of course, we still need to be much better to reach the same places, and we are not yet in equal numbers in leadership positions. But that is a matter of time, and a short time I would say.

What advice would you give to young women who want to build a career in engineering and in fields related to technology and innovation?

Do I need to give advice to these young women, colleagues I admire so much?

But let's go… I would tell these young women to embrace their curiosity without fear. Engineering changes all the time, and those who allow themselves to explore the new always go further.

Do not expect to have all the answers — I never did myself. The important thing is to put yourself out there, take up space, and keep exploring. Innovation needs restless minds, and yours were born restless.