THE 2023 HUMANS TO MARS SUMMIT
May 16-18, 2023
The National Academy of Sciences Building
Washington D.C.
My name is Lucas Radaelli. I work as a software engineer at Google in San Francisco, California on a team that develops accessibility solutions. The goal is to improve the lives of people with disabilities through technology.
Speaking of people with disabilities, I’m blind. I was born in Curitiba, Brazil without seeing with my left eye and lost sight of my right eye at the age of four. I grew up in Cascavel, Brazil. I decided, almost in my late teens, that I would like to work with computers because I believed that I could improve my life and the lives of other people with disabilities through technology.
I studied computer science at the Federal University of Paraná and also at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie in Karlsruhe, Germany.
When I graduated, I went to work at Google in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. For five years, I worked at the Google Search team that developed the search algorithm that ranks search engine results. In 2019, I moved to the United States to work on a team that develops accessibility solutions in order to improve the lives of people with disabilities, something that has always been important to me.
I love to talk about accessibility and inclusion, but these are not just the subjects that I’m interested in. I believe they are a means for me to achieve other goals. If I speak of accessibility in the context of education, it is because the ultimate goal is to learn something, while accessibility is what allows me to get there. If I talk about inclusion in society, it is because the ultimate goal is for people with disabilities to live a life with equal opportunities.
On my personal page, I also hope to talk about heavy metal, boardgames, programming, science fiction and fantasy, chess, writing, music composition, piano, accessible sheet music and whatever else comes up. A, and of course: my stories.