Former Mentors

Here you can read about our former mentors who are not taking part in ISEC this coming summer. Biographies of our current mentors can be found here.

Andrés

Andrés was born in the Canary Islands to a Bolivian-Galician family and has been involved with Astrophysics from a young age. He moved to Italy to do IB at the Collegio del Mondo Unito dell’Adriatico, where he founded the astronomy club. He is now graduating with a Master’s in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Bath and is scheduled to start a PhD position at Kings’ College London researching neutrino oscillations as a member of the T2K – Super/Hyper Kamiokande collaboration. His main academic interests lie in pure mathematics, modeling, astrophysics, particle physics and mathematical physics. He is currently working on determining the causes for entropy profile bimodality in galaxy clusters.

Andrés is a passionate musician and has been playing classical guitar for 15 years. He is also a conductor and the founder of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Bath. He is particularly moved by the works of Dowland, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert and has given several lectures on the life and works of these composers.

Andrés was involved in the early developmental stages of ISEC and was a mentor at Online ISEC 2020.

 

Elif

Elif was born in Central Anatolia, specifically the Cappadocia region of Turkey. The region is known for its natural beauty and historical stories that combine many different cultures under a single roof. Her love for nature led her to study Molecular Biology and Genetics. During her studies, she discovered an interest in data analysis, which in turn led her to complete a master’s degree in the field of Bioinformatics.

She always creates time for extracurricular activities. Elif has been an amateur classical guitarist for more than ten years. In that sense, she has assisted and led many guitar lessons for people from different backgrounds and ages. She is also involved in different volunteer coding events such as DjangoGirls, both as a mentor and organizer. She created a project called Music Within, which is an installation merging music and led signals that are produced from mutation data. This project allowed her to share her enthusiasm for science and art with the help of her supervisors, lovely friends, and family.

She loves horses and they have recently become an important part of her career. Currently, she is doing her PhD at Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics and her topic is sequence diversity of the Y chromosome in different species; her first candidate species is horses. Besides keeping her existing activities, she is also trying to deepen her sports journey.

Elif was a mentor at Online ISEC 2020 and 2021.

 

Erinç

Erinç was born in İstanbul, Turkey. He spent his first 8 years in the city of Tekirdağ, before moving to Çanakkale with his family. The city witnessed numerous turning points throughout history and was the location of many epic classics such as the ‘Iliad’ by Homer. Erinç developed an interest in science during his childhood and, by the end of high school, decided to delve into the magical world of biological sciences.

After graduating high school, he studied Biology at the Middle East Technical University. During his undergraduate years, he contributed to many non-profit scientific conferences and seminars, which were organized by the University’s Biology and Genetics Student Society. He also translated several scientific articles for Evrim Ağacı, a non-profit popular science society. After graduation, he completed his Master’s Degree in the field of Ancient DNA in the same department and presented his research at three different international scientific conferences.

One of his biggest passions is acting. Erinç has been involved with theater since elementary school. He also loves to sing songs from different genres and one day hopes to be able to play at least one instrument. In his free time, he enjoys playing video games and watching movies and TV series.

Erinç was a mentor at Online ISEC 2020.

 

Fernando

Fernando has always defined himself as a city boy. He grew up in the centre of Valencia, Spain, and spent his childhood dreaming of becoming a private detective, a football player, or a scientist. It was bound to be the last one of the three once he decided to study a chemistry degree at the University of Valencia. During his studies, his love for languages and foreign lands developed, and he spent a year on an Erasmus scholarship at Imperial College London researching organometallic complexes and their use as catalysts in organic reactions.

After graduating he sought an opportunity away from academia and moved to the Netherlands to start as an R&D intern in a company developing new technology for water desalination. During the seven years he spent in the Netherlands, he became a project manager at the same company and learned a lot about water treatment and the business world, but not very much Dutch. In the end he decided to move back to Spain.

Fernando found a new home in Madrid, where he changed career paths and took up teaching at a secondary school. He is currently in his second year as a physics and chemistry teacher and finds the learning curve in this job a lot more challenging than that of business or academia.

During his time away from Spain, Fernando has picked up new hobbies such as baking, playing board games, and drinking a pint of cider at the pub with friends. He also discovered a renewed liking for gazpacho. Fernando enjoys playing video games, playing & watching sports, and traveling to visit old friends.

Fernando was a mentor at Online ISEC 2020.

 

Miriam

Miriam was born in a small Spanish city in La Mancha, the land of Don Quixote’s adventures and misadventures. Her interest in astronomy and maths began before elementary school. In 2018 she completed her Masters in Astrophysics, focusing on the warm molecular gas around the Trapezium stellar cluster in the famous Orion Nebula. She is currently a third year PhD candidate, working in the Institute of Fundamental Physics at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Her research focuses on the galactic interstellar medium, specifically its physical and chemical properties. Miriam also studies the stellar feedback in warm molecular clouds where more massive stars form. She has carried out studies of the molecular gas in the direction of the Milky Way’s central black hole, in the Orion nebula, and in Sgr B2, which is a more massive and luminous molecular cloud in our galaxy. Miriam is currently working on, and starting to enjoy, writing her first first-author paper.

Miriam was part of the 2019 edition of the Spanish version of “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!”, as part of the CSIC Zone. She spent a few weeks connecting with teenagers about science and was pleasantly surprised with the high quality of their questions. She ended up winning in her zone! It was the students themselves that voted for her as their favorite scientist.

Miriam is one of the founders of ISEC and was mentor at Online ISEC 2020 and 2021.

 

Paula

Paula was born in Valencia and raised in a small city in the Spanish plains called Albacete. She studied physics at the University of Valencia and moved to Italy after receiving an Erasmus scholarship. She continues to reside in Italy while working as a research collaborator at MUSE, a science museum in Trento. She is mainly involved with programming and modelling environmental data, but is also studying topics such as the migration of birds through the Alps and the population flows of various species. She has also recently received a master’s degree in Renewable Energy and Energetic Sustainability from the University of Barcelona. Her main study topics are climate change, adaptation, data modelling and environmental studies.

Paula is very passionate about nature, mountains, and, in general terms, the world! She loves climbing and during summer she spends long periods of time hiking, climbing and exploring the Alps. In addition to spending time in the outdoors, Paula has a deep appreciation for music. She has been playing violin at the conservatory for almost 9 years and her musical talent also extends to her singing voice. She was a part of Valencia University’s chorus for two years and still enjoys singing with a group whenever there is a guitar around.

Paula was involved in the early developmental stages of ISEC and was a mentor at Online ISEC 2020.

 

Vlad

Vlad was born in Brasov, in the heart of Transylvania, where he fell in love with mountains and nature as a whole. At the age of seven he moved to a small rural village in Moldova, where he had a peaceful childhood with hiking, football matches and horse-riding filling his days before moving to Italy at the age of 10. After short residences in various Italian cities, he finally moved to Genoa at the age of 13, where he has been living ever since.

Here he attended the scientific high-school G.D. Cassini where he was part of the Astronomy and Robotics club and where he co-founded the ForMe Festival, a yearly cycle of conferences during which he gave speeches for 3 editions.

He currently studies Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at UniGe, but his interests span throughout different fields of Informatics: Visual and Parallel Computing, and as well as Security and Privacy being the main ones. Moreover, he is part of the IANUA excellence school, where he serves as student representative in the AD board, and he is member of the Global Shapers Genoa Hub, where he has just been appointed as Impact Officer, starting from March 2021.

Vlad has a very international mindset, thanks to his family movements, to his participation in numerous summer camps across all Europe and his exchange semester in the Netherlands as part of the Erasmus Program.

He is a naturally curious person with interests varying from Philosophy to Psychoanalysis; when asked to describe himself he often uses Terence’s phrase: “Homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto”. (“I am a human being, so nothing human is foreign to me”). From time to time he also puts the books down, sometimes for a chess game, others to make different experiences of the world, by meeting new people and traveling.

Vlad was a mentor at Online ISEC 2021.