Over the last 40 years, researchers have come to realize that on the grand scale we are situated in filamentary structures of dark and gaseous matter flowing towards local overdensities. It is those overdensities, which give rise to objects such as our own Milky Way. As a graduate researcher, I conducted numerical experiments to determine how hot cocoons of gas around galaxies really form, how spin of such galaxies evolves with time, or where undetected but theoretically expected luminous matter(the "missing baryons") resides in the Universe.
Non-profit for diversity in STEM
Since 2015 I have been organizing events and leading various initiatives aimed at supporting careers of women in STEM in Switzerland, including informal
meetup gatherings and opening the first Swiss satellite of Geek Girls Carrots in Switzerland. In September 2017, I founded a non-profit organization called
women++ . Its primary focus has been on building up competitive skills via educational workshops on
software development, machine learning and data science, blockchain technologies, and others. I also initiated and managed the first women-friendly hackathon in Switzerland
"Hack'n'Lead" ,
which answered to the demands of a growing group of women interested in technology by providing mentorship, preparatory events and childcare activities on site.
The project inspired other hackathons to adopt this event design and received recognition in Swiss media outlets.
Research in planetary science
Recent impact site on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
Impact cratering and mass wasting are two most common surface modification processes in the Solar System, which are
affecting objects as small as comets and asteroids, and as large as our own Earth. The results of their activity can be
observed from spacecraft orbiters. Combining physics-based modeling of these processes with geomorphometric measurements of the features
they leave behind such as impact craters, ejecta, or rock falls,
opens completely new avenues. We may not only be able to better explain
how these features form but also reveal the structure and basic composition of the underlying subsurface in the process, which
has direct applications to astrobiology and space exploration. This is currently my
main research interest. Mars is my sandbox for developing new techniques that will be then applied to the Moon and other bodies.
Innovating research infrastructure
Scientific Ecosystem Experimentation with Decentralization
SEED was an experimental project with the goal of incentivizing collaboration and openness in science,
providing new ways of funding research projects, and empowering the scientific community to be appropriately rewarded for their work. Multiple stakeholders of the
research ecosystem - researchers, librarians, funding organizations, publishers, technologists, policy makers and executives - gathered in Davos in February 2019
to achieve that goal. I lead SEED to become a mix of an educational conference, interdisciplinary think tank and finally a project incubator, during which a dedicated
team of engineers built an open source prototype of a decentralized publishing platform "PubHub" for ETH Zurich Library. This innovative project attracted media attention
and facilitated open technology collaborations between industry and academia. Its legacy includes 6 prototypes for a better research infrastructure described in a series
of presentations available online. GitHub code
Blockchain analytics
How to interact with the Ethereum blockchain and create a database with Python and SQL
I wrote open source code which creates a database containing data residing on the Ethereum blockchain with a centralized SQLite database management system for fast readout. I also wrote a tutorial for anyone wishing to analyse the activity on the Ethereum blockchain, and conducted an investigation during a period of suspicious activity, which was picked up by the most important news outlet in the cryptospace.
