Profile

I am a 26-year-old chemistry PhD. I’m Brazilian, and have been living in Ireland for 2 and a half years.

I am a chemist, but not the usual type. I don’t work in a lab wearing goggles, gloves and a lab coat, as most of you must think scientists do. I’m a computational chemistry, so what I actually do is simulate things in a computer to study and understand the chemistry behind it and the behavior of different materials.

My work day starts at around 10 am and I usually have no idea of when I’ll be going back home. I usually divide my day in three parts:

(1) Writing – as a PhD student I have a lot of writing to do! Writing papers (articles that are published in journals), book chapters (we do write parts of actual books) and progress reports regarding my PhD (parts of my thesis that need to be written along the 4 years)

(2) Actual work – setting up simulations of my chemical systems (right now I’m simulating a material which is a type of ceramic) and analyzing my results.

(3) Teaching duties – PhD students usually teach and do some lab demonstration for college students. So I have to demonstrate some labs along the week, and then correct lab reports/assignments from my students.