Two months ago my family grew and we welcomed a lovely 20 month old boy. After a frustrating three year process, we travelled to India and met our wonderful son. The last intense steps, planning the trip, and adapting to the new situation all together took a toll on my free time in the past few months.

Before that, work stole my time (and energies). As I previously mentioned, one year ago I started working as Technical Project Manager at Relex Solutions Oy. Our main product is a complex 10 year old software, with great potential in terms of flexibility. It took few months to gain confidence with it and dive into customer projects. In addition to that, I happily took on the role of Market Technical Responsible for the Italian market. That added a dimension to the complexity of the system. I spent very exciting and intense months right before starting my parental leave.

During this long pause, I kept wondering how to manage this blog in the future. I started this with a clear goal: keeping an updated professional online profile, while writing of work-related matters. However, my working life has changed so much in the past few years and, to be frank, has shifted a lot from my core competence, which is mathematics. I will give up a coherence of topics dealt with, to keep following my working life and its evolution, in the hope of not bore anyone among my readers.

L'articolo Life happened sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

The main scope of the thesis is to collect all known results about transmission eigenvalues and non-scattering energies, a topic of research which has flourished in the past 30 years. There are no original results in the thesis, but I have completed several proofs which in my opinion were lacking several details. In addition, I felt literature was quite scattered (ironic, I know) and it was hard to group or order results in any order. I tried to add also that value to my thesis.

If you grew curious, you can download the manuscript from this link.

L'articolo Graduated, at last sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

I have been neglecting my blog lately as some major changes happened in my life. About three weeks ago I said goodbye to academia and started working at RELEX Solutions, a growing Finnish (& international) software company which offers automatized solutions for managing the supply chain processes.

Leaving academia - after about 10 years, studying years included - was hard, especially given all the projects I was vetting and those I had myself started. However, I feel it was the right choice for me, given my professional ambitions, my set of skills, and my personal life plans. The recent economic cuts in Finnish academia were an additional push out of there, not for a imminent risk, but because I felt they slimmed my future opportunities in academia even more.

Things at my new job have started great. I have been blessed with the most helpful and friendly colleagues, and a positive and energetic atmosphere at the office. Supply Chain management includes many mathematical challenges, optimization and, of course, handling big data. There are tons of new things to learn and I am putting all my enthusiasm in doing so. Looking forward to present some interesting SC math here soon!

L'articolo Ch- ch- changes! sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Why all this? Women are severely underrepresented in mathematics, especially in Scandinavian countries, even though they top charts for gender equality. Recently EWM collected data from the country coordinators to describe the single situations and filed a report. The situation in Nordic countries is too extreme to ignore:

L'articolo Women in Mathematics in Finland: Amal Attouchi sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

The movie depicts the story of one of the finest minds of last century and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was what you'd call a true genius, an independent thinker who could not bend to the typical mathematical formalism nor to social conventions. He was born and lived the first part of his life in (British) India, in the region of Madras. in He showed a lively interest in mathematics already at the age of 11, and by the age of 15 he was able to master advanced notions and carry on his own research, often on known results he was not aware of. Basically he was re-building mathematics from almost scratch! He won a college scholarship, but he was so focused on mathematics that he performed poorly in other subjects and lost it. He tried to enrol in another college, with same results. His thrive to study mathematics and only mathematics led him to extreme poverty and corrupted his health. At age 21, he married and got to search for a real job. He found one in accountancy, a trivial job for his abilities which left him with much spare time to continue his studies.
In 1913, Ramanujan took the initiative and started sending letters to English mathematicians, for support and advice. Among his recipients, was Godfrey Hardy, a brilliant researcher of mathematical analysis and number theory. Ramanujan had no formal education in mathematics. Most of his work relied on epiphanies he had during spiritual meditation. Many mathematicians were skeptic of his true abilities, but came around after making direct contact with him. Hardy was the opposite as the Indian mathematician: he was atheist, while Ramanujan was deeply religious; he championed formalism and pure proofs, while the other basically guessed (right) deep results and did not care about technical details. However, Hardy managed to see past his own style and became Ramanujan's best supporter. He convinced him to travel to England, where he lived the last years of his unfortunately short life. Hardy tried to educate him, without suppressing his unique style, and polished his results so that they would be easy to publish on journals. In 1918 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and became one of his youngest members. In the same year he was also appointed Fellow of the Trinity College, in Cambridge, the first Indian to be honoured with the title. One year later, his health forced him to return to India to his wife, and he died in 1920 at the age of 32 from an incurable sickness.

He left the mathematical community with an incredible treasure. Most of his results needed to be proved (or disproved) and a journal was founded to collect results inspired by his work. In 2011, India declared the day of his birth, December 22nd, as "National Mathematics Day". He also left us the taxicab numbers. His most famous conjecture, named after him, waited for 50 years to be solved by Pierre Deligne.
I am very excited about this upcoming movie, and while waiting for it, I'll make sure to read the book which inspired it.

L'articolo The man who knew infinity: a movie about Ramanujan sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

When I read the headline, I felt annoyed, without getting why at first. Was there something in the figurines? Nope, it was the title. The father "doesn't work". That is not the meaning of stay-at-home parent at all. I am sure whoever wrote this entry had the best intentions, in fact I could not find trace of the piece of news on other major Italian newspapers. It didn't make it as a minor article in any other newspaper in Italy, meaning that there's someone at La Repubblica who really cares about showing this small victory towards gender equality. However, words are powerful and can help bias spread out. Here words were chosen unwisely.

First of all, daddy is carrying an infant, still drinking from a bottle. This makes it more likely that daddy is taking some time off from work, while mommy chose to go back to work. This is the movement we're trying to start in our civil society. We want fathers to feel parental leave as their right, as a safe and socially acceptable choice. Sure, I also want dads to feel safe choosing to be a stay-at-home parent and make it their full-time job, as well, but this is a choice that today middle-class families rarely can afford to make.

Second thought, from my personal experience. My job and my technical skills are a fundamental part of my identity. I studied and worked a lot to be able to do what I like, I invested and still am investing a big portion of my time. When my daughter was born, I took almost one year off, during which I went to several social meetings with other parents ( 99% mothers). After few months of meeting all these new people at playdates and such, I noticed we never ever asked each other about our professional lives. We were just moms. I love being a mother and my daughter is the most beautiful thing I created (sorry, MatLab scripts), but I am much more than an uterus with legs. Even though this feeling accompanied me for the rest of the parental leave, I tried to be rational and kept repeating myself that I was just overreacting. Until when my husband took his parental leave. People always asked about the job that was waiting for him.

There is nothing wrong or bad being a full-time stay-at-home parent, I admire people who are. It's an hard choice and a heavy job made out of love for family. It is also an extreme choice that few people want or can afford to do. This is why parental leave found his way in many countries, not to force people to make the painful choice between work and family, and guarantee infants the best care. Because of pay-gaps, social pressure and even natural conditions (breastfeeding), often mothers feel forced to take all or most of the allowed time-off. On the other hand, in many countries fathers feel an awful social pressure and do not take their rightful time-off, as it is seen the same as taking a vacation (you are seen as lazy). If an headline like the one above underlines that a stay-at-home dad is not working, there's a strong risk to send a wrong and counterproductive message. Let's stress instead this father is doing a great job taking care of his family.

L'articolo Lego stay-at-home dad: a reflection on role and hidden bias sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Since January 1st, 2016, the Helsinki Institute of Physics has a new appointed director, Prof. Paula Eerola from University of Helsinki. Paula is the 4th director of the Institute since its start of operations in 1996 and the first woman to be appointed. She has a rich research background in particle physics and an academic career which made her travel to Switzerland and Sweden, before coming back to her home university in Helsinki in 2008.

Congratulations for the great achievement! Can you tell me something more about HIP?

Thank you. The Helsinki Institute of Physics is a joint research institute operated by five Finnish universities: University of Helsinki, Aalto University, University of Jyväskylä, Tampere University of Technology and Lappeenranta University of Technology. Its board consists of representatives of the five universities and a scientific advisory board. Formally the Institute belongs to the Faculty of Science in University of Helsinki.

What are you main responsibilities as director?

I am a sort of CEO of the Institute. I supervise scientific operations, take care of personnel issues, make budget plans, and operate under the national mandate HIP was granted to manage all Finnish research at CERN. Soon we will take part also to FAIR research projects, a new center for subatomic research currently under construction in Germany. HIP also helps the Finnish “CERN co-operation high school network”, which allows high school (“lukio”) classes to visit the CERN facilities. Our researchers act as lecturers and guides during the visits. About 80% of all Finnish high schools take part in this educational project, which involves a long preparation and several school subjects: physics, of course, but also English language - since the visit is in English - and Finnish language class. The students usually write an article in the local Finnish newspaper about the trip. I once asked to first-year physics students in Helsinki how many of them took part in such a programme and many raised their hands. I think this kind of inspiration is very important for younger people, to understand what they want to do.

Can you disclose some cool physics HIP does at CERN?

HIP is involved in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is the biggest and highest energy particle accelerator in the world. The experiments at the LHC we are contributing to are called CMS, ALICE and TOTEM. CMS is one of the two experiments which discovered the Higgs Boson. I used to be leader of the Finnish team of CMS and becoming director of HIP felt like a natural continuation of this path.

Do you have any career advice for aspiring or young scientists?

I think the basis of everything is your own interest and motivation. Do not hesitate and calculate too much which job you will end up doing. The academic career is not deterministic, you need strong faith and you have to accept uncertain conditions.

One obstacle in particular in Finland is that people tend to work too much alone, too afraid of asking questions or discussing their work. They tend to go home, make their calculations alone and come the day after with an answer. However, science doesn’t work like this, it requires constant interaction, not working in a sort of “vacuum”, it asks for cooperation and feedback. If you truly collaborate with someone, the final entity will be greater than the sum of two single parts. I think this scientist ideology should be revised. I advice not to be afraid to ask or to look stupid.

What is your perspective on women in physics? Any advice?

I think it is still harder for women physicists to be considered in a non-biased way, compared to male colleagues. I have been member of Nordic Women in Physics (NorWiP) for many years and I even took part in a focused training for women in leadership at Lund University, in Sweden. Sometimes younger people don’t acknowledge the issue until it hits them hard. At the same time, we need not to make girls depressed. They simply need to be aware and alert, so that if something happens, they can react. I have made my career as a single parent, it often has been hard to plan and organise everything. External baby-sitting help has been mandatory.

Did you have to travel or live abroad a lot?

Yes, I lived for six years in Geneva. Then, I was a researcher and later a professor in Sweden, at Lund University. My son was three when I was offered the first position in Sweden. It was a hard decision to take, moving to a new place without any social network.

Thank you again to Paula for sharing her story and point of view, and, again, congratulations!

Picture: Linda Tammisto.

L'articolo Paula Eerola, coordinating Finnish physics research at CERN sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

I am proud to say one of the speakers was my advisor and inverse problems researcher Prof. Samuli Siltanen. His talk was titled "How to defuse a photobomb" and showed some mathematical techniques for image enhancement and manipulation, in particular inpainting. Samuli was claimed winner at the end! You can enjoy his talk right here:

You can browse a photogallery of the event at this link.

It was great to see a mathematics talk winning the hearts of the audience. Congratulations, Samuli!

L'articolo Science Slam Helsinki 2015: a triumph for Inverse Problems sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Baby-wise it went much better than I expected: she played, slept and watched cartoon and I was able to listen to almost all talks. I could even present my own during her afternoon nap (slides to be found here).

Science-wise, I heard about many interesting projects. Inverse Days is the annual meeting of the Inverse Problems research community in Finland. Since it's a great chance to get to know all ongoing projects in Finland, there are often guests from abroad as well. Since 2010, I have been missing only one meeting, because of my parental leave. The dominant theme this year has been EIT, on which many groups in Finland are working at the moment.

For me, the highlight has been a nice presentation by Lauri Harhanen from DTU. He started last May in the huge ongoing project HD-Tomo and he's working on an interesting optimization of gradient descent minimization methods, based on physical modelling of material a priori information in CT. When I will upgrade to real data, this could be a fruitful improvement of my framework.

During the conference, we also had the second meeting of Women in Inverse Problems, a small network started one year ago. We agreed that it would be nice to have some statistics (local or nation-wide) on presence of women in mathematics, and investigate on reasons why the disproportion is created. Let's hope we can follow up on this idea. At the moment our most active action is a small mailing list, where we share interesting events or discussion topics (drop me an email if you want to join, since it's closed).

It's been nice to be at Inverse Days once again and I also realised that this was my first talk at this event. See you soon, Lappeenranta!

L'articolo Live from Inverse Days 2015: baby on board sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Kirsi is a force of nature, as the picture she chose for the poster gives away. Her research is mostly in the area of differential geometry, but she goes beyond pure mathematics research. Last year she pioneered an interdisciplinary course at Aalto University about Mathematics, Art and Architecture, that was concluded by a final exhibition of "math-art masterpieces". She is passionate about teaching and never stops searching new ways to improve. You can read her recent interview on Kumpula Women blog, to have a taste of her views before the talk.

Only in the few years I spent here, I met amazing women working in science. Maybe I was lucky in my encounters, but I less frequently find the same passion and enthusiasm in men, as I found in many women here. I think of Johanna, who works so hard to improve mathematics teaching at any level; Anne-Maria, who has always been busy with research, training students for Math Olympiads and writing for the magazine Solmu; there's Martina, who's completing her postgrad studies and is a mother of three; Åsa, who does research with one hand and coordinates a doctoral school with the other; Hanne, on whom you can always count to get things done and well. I could go on for hours and these are only few of the amazing women I met at my math department (I apologise to all those who did not appear on the list: it was a brainstorming!).

Maybe I notice their achievements better because I feel I can relate to them, but I really need to feel this connection in my daily life. It gives me great courage to look at these close-by women and see that they are making it. At the same time, I have the privilege of talking plainly with some of them and of learning their difficulties and how they overcome them, another precious contribution.

In the spirit of sharing this opportunities with other girls who are in need of role models to relate better to, I started this series of seminars. Contents will be scientific (no policy making this time!), but accessible to undergrad students. Let's highlight women's contribution to Finnish mathematics!

L'articolo Women in Mathematics in Finland: Kirsi Peltonen sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.