We want to put our members in the spotlight! For the Meet the WISE series, we interview WISE members in different stages of their career across the university. We hope that their stories, experiences and career paths can be an inspiration to other women at TU/e.
Hello! Could you please start by introducing yourself and your work here at the TU/e?
My name is Astrid Barreiro. I'm doing my PhD at the department of electrical engineering. My research focuses on mathematical modeling for optical fiber transmissions. My work aims to develop simple models for light propagation in fibers so that one can use them to design pragmatic digital signal processing schemes.
I did not start as an electrical engineer though; my background is in physics. For my bachelor's and master's degrees, I worked on theoretical aspects of quantum computation, but when I had to choose a Ph.D., quantum was losing popularity, so I decided to jump off the quantum ship. Of course, as things usually happen, after I took that decision quantum started to grow in popularity again.
So, you have experience then as a woman both in a physics department and now in an electrical engineering department. What has that been like?
Well, that was a huge transition. I think it's not just the transition from physics to electrical engineering... it was more the transition from sciences to engineering. Previously, the things I was working on were more on the science side, engineering is more applied. The engineering environment felt much more tense; people tend to rush and there is an urgency for publishing... an urgency for numbers... that I hadn’t experienced before. Science, in my experience, is a bit more relaxed; there you know things need time to be researched properly before you can put them out. Engineering is more -- whatever you have, put it out. The focus is on thinking about “How are we going to sell it?”, “How are we going to put out a paper on this?”. Whereas in science, it was more “Ohh, this sounds cool! Let's dig some more!”. There you could spend years digging for the sake of pleasing your intellect.
How did you experience this switch to an environment with much more pressure to produce output very quickly?
I started thinking that my role was to perform. I find it very sad to start a Ph.D. thinking that you are supposed to perform instead of learning -- instead of engaging in research as something enjoyable and that you can collaborate on. Then the weight of having to perform can smash you, and in my case, that happened. It affected my mental health and wellbeing. It also affected how much of myself I wanted to invest in this environment. I lost a lot of the love and the passion for it, just because I couldn't understand the environment. I felt pushed to produce and perform, but that was out of sync with the mindset I originally had. Because I couldn't see it with clarity back then, I just felt that I wasn't capable. It took me time to realize that it was the environment that was triggering those thoughts. Eventually, I went into a burnout. At the time, I didn’t have the emotional literacy to understand what was happening there. And that was difficult. Especially when you are in an environment that doesn't have the emotional literacy either. Then you feel surrounded by people who are doing great, and you are the only one who is not. You end up thinking...what is wrong with me!?
What is the gender balance like in your surroundings? Do you think that it played a role in your experience?
When I first started, there were only two women in my lab. There was no example of what a feminine approach to research could look like. As women, we are often taught that we must be independent – that we must grow our human value so that they [men] can see that we have value. You end up closing instead of opening and I thought this was what I was supposed to do. You look for a reference to show you what to do, and I thought I should do the same as those around me. But that “same” was not working for me. So, a posteriori I feel the gender imbalance contributed to me not being able to see alternatives to how I could approach things.
Having role models who are doing things differently in your environment is so important. Are there any role models you look up to?
I have a lot of role models. I think with time I have learned to see role models and value in every person I meet. Especially women since I feel much more related to them than to men. All women around me – those who are just starting, those who are on the same level as me and who are doing things differently, and women who are ahead of me, and who inspire me to think “How do I get there?”.
I have experienced a shift in the way that I approach things. I used to repel many of my female characteristics, thinking that those were not the things that my environment was requesting from me. Right? We all do that in a way. But now my approach is more like... whenever I meet someone -- especially women – I am so fascinated. I am there like “How do you do things? Show me! I want to learn from you!”. I approach them with genuine curiosity and that makes everyone a potential role model for me.
You seem to have quite a lot of clarity around your own values and what values you find important, but it sounds like you didn't start in that place. What happened in the middle? How did you get this clarity for yourself?
Honestly, burnout... COVID... and failure. The type of failure that makes you touch the bottom. I think many of us in academia believe that what we are doing is defining us. And because of that, we mistakenly think everything else is irrelevant. We end up giving 100% weight to the things that are measurable in the environment we do our work. I also think that touching the bottom is transformative. You must use all your intellect to find ways to get yourself out of there. It forces you to reevaluate almost everything in your life. It also helps getting clarity on your beliefs and the reasons why you are doing things. For everything in my life, I had to convince myself that this is exactly what I wanted. And when I was firm in that belief, I took a step where I could stand. You pile up each step and suddenly end up very high, and you think, “How did I get here!?”. Well, a lot of work got me here. In that way, I was able to build myself some solid ground to stand on.
I also went through asking people for help and look for resources to help me grow differently and diverge from what I was being asked to do in my environment. For example, when I was asked to be more individualistic, or focus on performing, I became able to say: no, I'm not going to do that.
That takes a lot of courage.
It does. But also, it means you must be willing to sacrifice things. When you choose for your mental health – when you choose for the things that are keeping you alive – there are many other things that you need to stop doing. That can also make you feel behind – in publications, in output, in all the things that you are supposed to do. But you must remind yourself constantly that you are growing in many other ways, and that is also part of your value. Then it balances out.
This is also an act of resistance. I am very glad that you are still here in academia because we (women) need to be here.
Yes, we do.
We also share these values in the WISE community as well. One of the themes we are addressing is this culture of collaboration vs competition. So much of academic culture pushes us towards performing and proving ourselves through competition. But we would like to see a shift more towards a collaborative culture.
Yes, and I like that so much. Something I have learned is that when we (women) are in male-dominated environments, we can become very aggressive towards each other. And because of that, we create environments where it's difficult to connect and ask for help from other women. We are not friends in those moments, we are rivals. I think it is very important for us to facilitate conditions for people to engage with collaborative practices.
If there was an early career researcher starting tomorrow, what advice would you give her?
I was thinking about this recently when talking to another woman who has just joined my group as a Ph.D. I saw myself in her worries. The first thing I would tell her is that she needs to trust her process. If you are investing your time, giving your best, and putting in all your effort, you must trust that the process will take you somewhere. Avoid unfair comparisons with the people around you. Your reference should always be yourself.
The second would be to acknowledge that you are an expert on your topic! You are looking at it all the time; sure, you're also learning, but you are extremely exposed to your topic of research. There might be others who already have a PhD in your area, but the fact that we are exposed to it regularly makes us the experts in conversations and we need to empower ourselves with that. We tend to feel that we are here to be constantly performing or being assessed. So, we over-prepare for a meeting, and forget that it is about asking: “What can I take from them to help me grow?”. Others might ask questions, and those questions might make you question yourself... “why did I do this and not that?”. But it is just input. I can trust the decisions I made and use that input to keep growing. I've tried hard to shift the dynamic of those situations for myself and make it something positive and not something destructive. I hope that women who are starting in this field will have the same shift earlier on their path. It can be hard, especially in environments like this, but we are here for a reason - trust your process and keep it up!
It's so wonderful to hear that you are sharing your own experience with more junior researchers so that she can start in a much better place than where you began.
Thank you, I think this generosity in sharing our experiences and what we've learned is fundamental. The stinginess in academia can be so dominant. I remember looking for alternative ways of doing this [academia] and realizing that too few would advise me on what to do. Instead, you have to become the living proof that things can be done differently and start inhabiting your philosophy. I find it important to show women joining my group – especially because my group is very male-dominant and sometimes there can be toxicity that comes from that. The environment is made for them, so everything seems to be okay from their perspective. But for me, it was not. I think things need to change from the inside, that's why I'm generous with new women joining.
Talking of generosity and connecting with other women in this space, have you attended many WISE events?
The first event from WISE I attended was online during COVID. It was so cool because we had people participating from the High Tech Campus and I ended up in a breakout room with women who are working in leadership positions at top companies. It was also confronting that they were so generous in sharing their experiences with us. I found it cool, and those spaces are necessary. We need to do things where we [the community] experience that they add value, instead of events that are just convenient institutional check boxes. We need places that invite us to talk, discuss things, ask for advice, and network as a community.
*Astrid also helped create the Photonics Society Eindhoven. If you are interested in learning more about them, please check out their site here: