Krissia de Zawadzki

    Age: 26 years old
    Current course: PhD at Theoretical Physics (IFSC/USP)

    Krissia, tell us about your academic experience.
    Between 2009 and 2012, I did Scientific Initiation in the Imaging Process and Pattern Recognition area. In 2011, I graduated in Computational Physics and in 2014, I finished my Master's Degree in Science at São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC). During my Master's, my studies were in the Condensed Matter Physics area, focusing at the Kondo problem and the Numerical Renormalization Group (NRG). Currently, I am a PhD student in Theoretical Physics at IFSC/USP.

    Why did you choose a scientific career?
    Since I have always studied in public schools, I almost never had a physics teacher. There is an absurd shortage of physics and chemistry teachers at high school in public schools. During my freshman’s year I had a physics teacher. At my sophomore’s year, I did not have any physics teacher… it was always a substitute. But usually they did not teach any physics in class. I was frustrated with it for some time, and at that time, my idea of studying physics was to suppress this shortage.

    Currently, has the presence of women in exact sciences been increasing? How do you see it in your own course?
    Regarding what I observe in my Institute, the number of women has been increasing, but the number of women that remain at University is still smaller than when compared with the number of men. In my course, for example, there is a small number of women.

    Would you say there is any kind of gender segregation or discrimination, even if it is subtle? If yes, would you say it happens unconsciously?
    I believe so. Sometimes we notice through little things that people still have the image that scientist are men. I think that it can happen unconsciously, because it is a cultural matter. Women are raised to develop the reproductive role and men to be the head of the family. During my childhood, for example, boys received videogames as gifts while girls received dolls. The stimulus that defines who will be interested in science starts at an early stage. Now people have more knowledge about this, but back in my time it was not like that.

    An academic career, with graduation, master's and PhD, most of the time stabilizes at 30 years old. How does it impact you? Does it depend on the gender?
    Concerning the gender, the familiar subject matters greatly. The woman has to be well established to think about having a family later. When a PhD student has a child, for example, his academic life does not change as much as his wife’s. But it also depends on the person. It a very individual circumstance… Depends on what the person actually wants. Will she want to have a family? Maybe she prefers to be alone and dedicate herself to other subjects.