• How is it living in a different country?

Once you get used to it, not that bad. I was expecting a lot of different things from Belgium, both on the good and bad side. For example I was told that the weather is awful, but actually this spring was quite good. Also, when I hear from my Italian friends or family the question is always the same: how is the food? And actually it is fine (probably, also because I usually cook for myself)! The only thing I am still struggling to find here is a decent Espresso. That I miss so much…

• What motivated you to be in the FiBreMoD project?

I wanted to continue to work with composites, and when I found about this, it looked pretty amazing. Not only the possibility of doing what I like at a high scientific level, but also being part of a team of people across Europe, is something so stimulating.

The first time I saw FiBreMoD advertised, was for a different position than mine. I don’t remember which one, perhaps one of the positions in Paris. I applied for it and other two positions in total within the project. After some days of thinking, I decided that I wanted to do something practical rather than just modelling. Therefore I withdrew two of my applications except the one in Toyota, that looked more similar to what I had in mind. Luckily, it turned out well!

• What are your thoughts and first impressions about the whole FiBreMoD project?

The project is really interesting, and even if the cooperation between the ESRs is not daily, you can feel part of a team, sometimes with different goals, but following the same path. Also, I love the fact that we get a lot of training on soft skills or other transversal “-bilities”. Of course, the biggest part of our training is technical. Here it gets challenging, but still in a positive way. I am learning a lot every day.

• Any dream for your future you would like to share?

Apart from science, I have always been interested in journalism. I sometimes write articles for an Italian scientific blog, and I hope that one day this will be an important part of my career. I would love to see something I wrote published in really famous magazines. Who knows, perhaps I will end up on TV!

• If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?

Flying super-fast. Do I really need to explain why?