Here you can find some side activities and projects (more or less work-related) that I engage in alongside my PhD and research itself.
Student Representative
Since May 2022, I am part of the Student Representatives at ESO. The team is composed of five people, including myself, and our aim is to advocate for the students community and be a point of contact between them and the institutional bodies.
I am very lucky to be working with Amanda, Giulia, Ivanna and Thomas, amazing friends and colleagues. Because we are so many, we are able to take on more work than the usual 'rep duties' one might think of; this has allowed us to shape our roles in a way that best complements our own nature and inclinations, as summarised in the graphics to the right. For the first period (May 2022 - July 2023) I have been in charge of welcoming newcomers and helping them out with bureaucracy, practical aspects and so on; I was also co-coordinating the Student Working Group, whose aim is to further improve the already great condition of students at ESO. In July 2023, after the latest elections, we reshuffled the roles among us and I decided to take on the duty of communicating with the Office for Science. In this role I serve mainly as spokesperson for the students: my main tasks include collecting the students' doubts, requests and concerns and communicating them to the higher levels at ESO, as well as informing the students of matters and news that regard them. I also coordinate the Summer Students representatives.
Some of the activities and achievements I am mostly proud of include applying for, and obtaining, financial support to balance the increased cost of living (November-December 2022); handling disagreements and controversies, with the help of respectful workplace advisors; applying for funding to organise three PhD courses over 2024 on topics chosen by the students via surveys (September 2023).
This experience is allowing me to fully explore the many different aspects of working in an interngovernmental organisation and to gain a deeper understanding of the amazing underlying complexity. I am very grateful to be able to experience ESO not only as a scientist, but also from the more human perspective of caring for the community.
ESO Summer Research Programme 2023
During July and August 2023 I co-supervised Daria Zaremba, together with Marta de Simone and Lukasz Tychoniech, in the context of the 5th ESO Summer Research Programme. The aim of our project was to understand the formation path of methyl cyanide (CH3CN) using high resolution ALMA data of the outflow of S68N, a Class 0 protostar in the Serpens molecular cloud. In the six weeks that she spent at ESO, Daria worked with methyl cyanide (CH3CN) and formaldehyde (H2C) and used integrated flux maps and spectra to constrain the properties of the gas in four different locations in the outflow. She is currently writing her paper to present these results, so stay tuned!
Left to right: Lukasz, Daria, Marta, and myself on the last day of the Summer Research Programme.