Katya's journey in STEM

What inspired you to choose a career in science??

I found myself really enjoying scientific subjects. I wrote down what really brought me joy. It was beauty, structure, and unexpected interconnections between different scientific subjects. Finding all these patterns from different areas even made me feel euphoria.? Since my biggest pleasure was solving problems, I was literally solving problems all the time, everywhere, even in my bed in the mornings: sitting with a notebook and just writing something down. It was a huge passion for me, which led me further into science because that was the only thing I really enjoyed. The creativity of the whole thing was really fun.? Then I went to university, and of course, there were some people there who really inspired me, mostly my teachers. They were the ones who really revealed to me the beauty of science and guided me through it. I think it is an art to guide any person through the beauty of this. I think I started enjoying science since around fifth grade.?

What was your favorite subject???

Math, it was always math.?

Were there any key moments in your journey that stand out??

Yes, there was a very important point, which actually made me believe in myself. It was not a game changer in my career, but it was the moment when I felt that I'm doing what I meant to do whatever it was. I first got introduced to Math Olympiads relatively late, around last grade of school. Usually, people start way earlier and I didn't really expect to be successful. I did it more for fun. I was not expecting to receive anything else than some kind of paper saying that I did a good job competing at the city level. But that's not what happened.?

I made it to the top ten students in the capital, which was very surprising to me. And the other nine guys knew each other, and they were friends since fifth grade because of attending the Olympiads every year. And I was asking myself, what was I doing there among them. But this moment really made me believe in myself, and after that I did not consider any other career anymore.??

What advice would you give to a young girl who is considering a STEM career??

I suggest them to take care of their health. When you study science, it can take a lot of time and you really need to find time for yourself and for your health, which will also lead to better progress. Otherwise, you can just go mentally ?cuckoo”.??

Besides that, I suggest them to listen to themselves and know that everything they want can still happen, including kids and family. Anything they wish is possible.?

How would you explain your job to a 5-year-old??

My daughter asks me all the time what I'm doing when I work, so I tried to describe to her that in the world there are some important problems. Whatever it means she doesn't understand yet. But there are some important problems that people want to solve, and the key to solving them is hidden very deep within abstractions. Sometimes these keys are very hard to find, and you need to sit and think a lot to find them, and that's pretty much what my job is.?