Celine Maeder (Switzerland)
| Hello! My name is Celine! I am a Swiss, 29-year-old molecular biologist and work as a PhD student at EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) in Heidelberg. |
 |
After high school it was not so easy for me to decide what kind of studies and profession I would like to learn. For me it was important that my future job would not only consist of brain work but also manual work. My two favorite fields were architecture and molecular biology. After career counseling and practical trainings I had to take the hard decision and went for the studies in molecular biology at the Biozentrum (University of Basel).
When I started my studies, I was convinced that I would never do a PhD and would go for a job in industry after my diploma. I enjoyed the four years of a typical student life: a lot of parties, long semester breaks and stressful examination periods. I met a lot of interesting people and took the advantage of having the freedom to do a lot of different things: sports at university, learning an additional language and doing trainee exchange with Ukraine..
Celine Maeder |
|
Once I started with my diploma thesis, which consisted of a nine months' research project in the lab, I realised that I like a lot to work at the bench, performing experiments, discovering new things. I went through those typical moods of a researcher: I was excited about new results, sad and tired of producing no results because experiments didn't want to work, fascinated how easy or complicated biology can be. Unfortunately these nine months of diploma thesis were too short to really finish up a project; research just takes much more time.
This was exactly the time when I decided for myself that I would like to do a longer project, to start with a PhD. I also realised that I wanted to go abroad to do my PhD. I wanted to have a change in my life, to discover a new country. Well, I only made it to Germany, which is not so much of a difference compared to Switzerland. But I work here in an international institute. There are people from all over the world, mostly Europe, and we all communicate in English, the language of research. We collaborate a lot among each other and whenever I have question I will find somebody who will help me.
But there is not only work but also spare time, which we spend together: at EMBL there is a whole range of clubs, e.g. waterskiing and climbing club, where I actively take part in. In winter there are more cultural activities in Heidelberg, such as a jazz festival and a film festival.
School:
Kantonsschule Alpenquai Luzern