University of Bern, Switzerland
I remember my father telling me a story about when I was hitting a fridge with a hammer as a child. He asked what I was doing, and I said I was repairing it. I used to disassemble all the household devices, such as irons, the TV, the fridge, to see what was inside – and never put them back together. I was lucky I didn’t have a problem of choice – I knew what I wanted to do from an early age. I liked doing things with my hands. There are a lot of engineers working on DUNE; you’re always communicating with other civil, electronic, and other engineers. Even though I’m leading a small team of about 10 now, I still have time to do things myself, like making electronics designs and layouts, or programming FPGAs. It’s still the same passion I had when I was younger: to learn what the world is made of.