Profile: Yadira Valdivieso

1.What is your current position at the university? I am Yadira Valdivieso, originally from Mexico, and I am a Marie- Curie Fellow working at the University of Leicester in the algebra group led by Sibylle Schroll.

2. Why did you chose to study maths? I decided to study maths because when I was in high school, I watched a TV show about maths and nature. I was fascinated with the idea that maths can model real things and I was also good at math, so I thought it would be amazing if I could use equations to describe things like animals, virus, or rivers, the funny part is that I am not doing applied math, but this allowed me to find the algebra world.

3. What you most enjoy about your role? My job at the university is more related to research, I spend most of my time doing maths and learn about new topics, but I also work with students on some projects. Doing maths sometimes is frustrating, because our work consists of developing ideas or strategics to solve problems, and sometimes those ideas do not work. However, for me doing maths is like a game, I enjoy playing with some examples and use them to guess what is happening in general, I also enjoy having the opportunity to learn things all the time.

4. What are the common misconceptions in mathematics that are needed to be overcome? I think the most common misconception is that mathematicians are smart and that we have to be a genius to do maths. However, I am pretty sure that most of us are just working mathematicians.

5. What defines you other than maths? Part of my life is being a mathematician, being a teacher. However, I have other passions like living a zero-waste life, doing yoga, reading news from around the world, and traveling around the world.

6. Any inspirational quotes for you. I think one of my favourite quotes belongs to Maryam Mirzakhani, the first and so far the only woman awarded the Fields medal. She said, "you have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math."