"Just keep going!"

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be a firefighter," says Gerardo Hernandez-Sosa. He is one of the researchers on the fourth floor. With his research group, the professor from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) uses the rooms of the iL.

The fourth floor is full of scientists, researchers, students or professors. Who is actually who? Where do the various players come from and what makes them tick? This series will be about just that: To shed light on the people, to show their history and motivation, and most importantly to get to know them a little better. 

One of them is Gerardo Hernandez-Sosa, whose curriculum vitae shows interesting stages. He grew up in Mexico, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí; bachelor's in Physics Engineering and master's in Applied Science.

Interest developed in high school

Physics Engineering, that's pretty far from the childhood dream of being a firefighter, isn't it? Gerardo explains how his scientific career came about: "In high school, I became interested in physics and engineering. There were two researchers from a research institute at my home university who visited my high school and gave a kind of motivational talk about what a scientist does. I then had an appointment with them to visit their institute to learn even more. I thought it was something very interesting and decided to study Physics Engineering and then also do a Master's degree. After that, I got a scholarship and wanted to go to study abroad. In the end, I ended up in Austria for my PhD." He remembers his time in Austria fondly. In Linz, he was in a completely new country with a new university, a different culture and different ways of working, so he was able to learn many things, he reports. His postdoc took him to another continent again: In Santa Barbara, USA, he didn't have the pressure of writing a dissertation and was thus able to do research more freely with the plus point that the campus was right on the beach, which he took advantage of a few times after work.

Today, he is a professor at KIT's Lighting Technology Institute and localized with his research group in the iL's premises. "The work is off campus and we have the opportunity to have more contact with industry and colleagues in the company. I think this is especially interesting for post-docs and post-doctoral researches who might then work in industry some day, as they can see here what a possible job in the future might also look like," Gerardo reports.

Scientific exchange

Right now, only a few researchers are permanently in the iL's rooms. After completion of the renovation, there should be more research groups on the fourth floor. Gerardo is very much looking forward to the exchange that will then be possible again; at the moment it is very empty and quiet in the rooms.  He would also like to continue his research in Germany in the long term. When he compares it with his time in the U.S., many things are easier here: "I worked at a very prestigious university in my field, but in general, the overall package of work-life balance, research quality and other things was more equiliberated here in Germany than in the U.S.," he summarizes. Moreover, iL and KIT complement each other well. Both instututions focus on research, but there are different emphases: "KIT has great capacity for basic and applied research. A place like iL as a research platform can serve for pilot production of certain research results or as a place for start-ups. In the past, there have been some KIT employees who have gained such experience here. These kinds of things are complementary and can work very well," Gerardo reports.

Seeing new things

What excites him most about his work as a scientist is finding out new things, uncovering things and being able to see them, finding out something that didn't exist before, and working with many different people. He is aware that the road to this goal was rocky: "Most of the time, experiments that you work on every day fail. It's a difficult career, but it's also something, if you like it, that you can enjoy. If you have patience, it's a lot of fun. Just keep going!" is Gerardo's advice for prospective doctoral students.

 

Hannah Gieser

Abteilung Communications