“My name is Nadillia. I completed my bachelor’s in Physics in Indonesia. After graduating, I was not sure which career path to follow. I found the Master’s in Physics of Data at UNIPD, and I chose it because I get to learn about data science and machine learning, essential skills nowadays, while keeping my physics background alive.”

Moving from Indonesia to Italy was both an exciting and a challenging experience. I moved to a new continent, where I had to deal with unfamiliar languages, bureaucracy, and a different
academic system. At the time, I felt overwhelmed, but talking openly with friends, sharing information, and asking for help from professors and teaching assistants helped me a great deal
with this.
Academically, I love the structure and flexibility of the programme. Exams are offered multiple times throughout the year, which allows me to prepare more effectively and have greater
flexibility in organizing my studies. One of my favourite aspects is the freedom to choose many interdisciplinary physics courses. For example, I took a class about epidemiology and a class about time series analysis for business data. Now I am using the time series analysis methods in my research job on epidemiological data, which shows how versatile this knowledge can be.
Even though my current work is not strictly in physics, I feel that my physics background strongly shaped the way I approach problems, reason about models, and look for simple structures behind complex systems. In the future, I would like to continue doing research at the
intersection of data science and public health.