Career Evening - PhD in CS, done. What's next?
Join us for a Panel Discussion, Q&A session, meet-and-greets with individual speakers, and an Apéro!
Whether you’re considering a future in academia, industry, or entrepreneurship, there are many exciting paths ahead. How can you leverage your academic background to build a fulfilling career in research, development, teaching, or innovation? What should you be doing now if you’re thinking about starting your own company?
Join us for a Career Evening to hear from a panel of professionals who have taken diverse career paths after a PhD in Computer Science — from academic research and professorships to industry research and start-up ventures. Learn from their experiences, insights, and advice as they share their journeys beyond the PhD.
You’ll get the chance to meet five people who took differetn career paths after completing of their Ph.D. in Computer Science. Their backgrounds cover a range of topics, from computer graphics and vision to artificial intelligence or cybersecurity. They’re here to share their wisdom on computer science careers: what possibilities are out there, what they did well, and what they wish they’d done differently.
We’ll start with a panel discussion, where we’ll learn more about our speakers and their career paths. Then, we’ll break off into small groups for meet-and-greets, giving you a chance to ask them your burning questions in small committee! The event will end with an apéro.
Details
When: Thursday 27th of November, from 17:30 onwards
Where: CAB Food&Lab
Speakers
We’re excited to announce the following speakers:
- Doğa Doğan, Research Scientist at Adobe Research.
- April Yi Wang, Tenure-track Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich.
- Ivan Puddu, Co-founder & CEO at Soverli.
- Mara Graziani, Research Scientist at IBM Research.
- Martin Strohmeier, Senior Scientist at CYD/Armasuisse.
Read on for more details about our speakers!
Doğa Doğan is a Research Scientist at Adobe Research working as part of the AI Experiences Lab. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. His research interests span two areas related to ubiquitous intelligence: Embedding information, intelligence, & interaction into everyday objects, and GenAI for developing human-centered creativity support tools & experiences
April Yi Wang is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zürich, directing the Programming, Education, and Computer-Human Interaction Lab (PEACH Lab). She received her PhD from School of Information at University of Michigan. Her main area of research is in human-computer interaction (HCI) and educational technology.
Ivan Puddu is the CEO and Co-founder of Soverli. He received my PhD from ETH Zurich where his research focused on hardware security, particularly improving and testing the limits of trusted execution environments. Soverli is bringing a new smartphone architecture to the market allowing areas on a device to be sealed off – such as for secure chats, crisis communications, or sensitive data belonging to companies and public authorities.
Mara Graziani is a Research Scientist at IBM Research Europe - Zurich. Her main interests are in multimodal foundation models for scientific discovery. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Geneva for developing methods to obtain interpretable outputs from deep learning approaches without decreasing model performance.
Martin Strohmeier is a Senior Scientist at the Swiss Cyber Defence Campus, primarily based at ETH Zurich, and a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. His work focuses on designing and analyzing security protocols for cyber-physical systems in critical infrastructures—aviation, satellites, space, and transportation systems. He received his DPhil from Oxford,focusing on the security and privacy of aviation communication technologies.
Join us at the 2025 VMI Career Event! 🎓✨ See you all!