Sci.STORIES
How Dr. Maria Vasina chose her scientific direction

Story by Dr. Maria Vasina

I did not plan to do science and never saw myself in this field, although since childhood people around me called me "professor" for my love of learning. Despite this, I liked doing something important, necessary and changing the world around me. I wrote my first "scientific" paper in math at school. And, probably, that is why I chose technical specialties, not even considering other possibilities. I chose the university on the principle "it is the best technical university in Russia, and also the building is beautiful, and I feel comfortable here", and the specialty "it seems to be the most girlish of all that is in Bauman Moscow State Technical University". It is a paradox, but I entered this university based on the results of the competition of scientific papers on materials science, where I became a laureate.

In the 4th year of education we had to choose a specialization, and I remember that we were given a list of scientific supervisors and literally a week to decide. "Nanotechnology - sounds trendy," I thought and chose a supervisor in this field on the advice of a lab assistant who had been working at the department for many years. My supervisor was new to the department, no one knew what to expect from her and what kind of research she was doing. We chose a topic that was unusual for the department - it was the technology of obtaining semi-finished products from granulated magnesium alloys. At that time, no one in Russia was doing this.

After working in the industry for almost 5 years, I realized that I lacked technical knowledge of metal forming and enrolled in a Master's program at The National University of Science and Technology (MISIS) for this specialty and began to study aluminum alloys (because they are the future of the automotive industry, the field where I was working at the time) under the guidance of the same supervisor as at Bauman! I also entered the competition of scientific papers (I became a laureate), and for this purpose I spent weekends and evenings after work in the laboratory, doing experiments. And I fell in love with my specialty all over again. It was difficult to combine a full-time job in the industry and full-time study in a master's program. And then I made the choice to dedicate myself to science, go to graduate school there, and do research. 

I did so because I felt that what I was doing was important and necessary, and that my research could be used to make completely new alloys with properties better than those currently used, and at the same price. But it is still difficult for me to fully accept the traditions of the academic environment, so I have retained as much as possible the system of work I am used to from the industry. 

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