As a girl, growing up, I loved reading books and was an introvert. I had a beautiful loving family where my parents told me I could be anything I wanted and allowed me and my sisters all the flexibility we could have. And that is what I did. I loved maths and sciences and only studied those subjects. My grades were always skewed. It was almost always 100 out of 100 in maths and horrible grades in other subjects – the teachers were very upset with me, but I was ok with that and so was my family.
I was a super awkward kid during my teen years and through my undergrad and graduate school. I never liked to put on makeup or lipstick and I have almost no sense of color matching. But I have been loved the way I am by my family and friends and it became the best gift I had when I was growing up.
I knew I wanted to be a scientist. On my way, I fell in love with computers and programming so I became a computer scientist. I went to study for my Master’s and PhD in the United States, at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In my lab, I worked with sensors and lots of hardware, and I found out that I was the only female PhD student in my professor’s lab over his 20 years of a teaching career (now he has one more female student). And yes, my professor loved me the most among all others! When I felt alone in any place, I knew I was special – I am sure you will feel the same one day and when there will be lots of people feeling special, we can do really amazing things, right?
Now I have two girls and we have lots of fun together. We even do research together – here here is a blog we wrote on childrens’ internet usage: researchblog.
