Dajczer retired as a professor of mathematics at the Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has made several important contributions in Riemannian geometry. His work has dealt especially with many aspects of the rigidity and deformation problem for isometrically or conformally immersed submanifolds in Riemannian ambient spaces. A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, he has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Cavalheiro obtained his medical degree and PhD at the Escola Paulista de Medicina, Brazil. He did post-doctoral internships at CNRS, France, and University of Rome, Italy. He served as President of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq), member of the Executive Committee of International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) and International Bureau for Epilepsy. He is professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery and Vice-Dean for Planning, Universidade Federal de São Paulo; and Vice-President, Academy of Sciences of São Paulo State, Brazil. He has developed important animal models of epilepsy with over 400 papers in refereed journals and supervised more than 50 PhDs. His honours include the Grã-Cruz do Mérito Científico Nacional, Comendador da Ordem do Rio Branco, Brazil; Michael Prize, Germany; and Milken Family Award, USA. He is full member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He was President of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). More recently, he has been working as an advisor to the Scientific Director of the São Paulo Research Agency (FAPESP), specifically overseeing FAPESP's Research Integrity Office.