Meet ESOP-fellow Roman Doronin
Every year, some 800 candidates apply for ETH Zurich's Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme (ESOP), 50 applicants are awarded the prestigious grant annually. Roman Doronin from Russia is one of the 2018 excellent scholars. He is a D-BSSE student enrolled in the Master's degree programme Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. Roman's experiences as an Amgen scholar in the Computational Biology group of Dagmar Iber during summer 2017 convinced him: the D-BSSE is his first choice.
What did you know about D-BSSE before you came here, and what was your motivation to come to ETH Zurich?
In 2017, I was very lucky to participate in the summer research internship at ETH Zurich supported by the Amgen Foundation. During this internship, I worked on a project in Professor Dagmar Iber's group in the field of developmental biology and also learned a lot about the research opportunities at ETH Zurich. It became clear to me that I wanted to specialize in computational biology, and D-BSSE felt like the perfect place to pursue this goal.
What were your expectations and were your expectations met since you arrived in Basel?
Yes, ETH Zurich has certainly met my high expectations in education. I am both excited and challenged about every course that I take now and the more I look up other courses the more of them I want to attend. It's going to be very hard to choose from such a large variety! Besides I didn't expect that there are so many activities going on - from panel discussions and round tables to big parties and numerous "Apéros" (Red.: Swiss aperitifs).
What were your first impressions?
Since I have already lived in Basel during my internship, I was already prepared for the Swiss lifestyle and culture. What really surprised me is how friendly and open people are at ETH Zurich and in Switzerland in general, and how everyone on the street knows English!
Which research will you pursue at D-BSSE?
I decided that my primary goal during the Master studies at ETH Zurich is to understand what area of biology I want to specialise in. For sure I want to become a computational biologist (I tried to work in the wet lab once and decided that this is definitely not mine). The computational skills can be applied to many areas of biology so I will need to figure out the specialisation. Currently I am very interested in developmental biology and computational neuroscience, so I hope that by the end of the Master programme I will try my hands at both of these disciplines.
Which hobby or private interests do you hope to pursue in Switzerland?
I found out that ETH Zurich offers a great variety of physical training to choose from and I was excited when I discovered climbing on this list! It has been a passion of mine for a long time and I am glad that I have the chance to practice it. Switzerland is also very well known for its beautiful mountains so I am definitely going to do a lot of hiking closer to the summer season.
Thank you and best of luck in your scientific career!