Profile
Michela Leonardi
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About Me:
Italian, after travelling across Europe I now live with my husband in Cambridge.
Besides science, I love museums, creative activities (painting, drawing, writing) and dancing. -
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Originally from Italy, I lived in a lot of different European countries (Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the UK). I fell in love with the UK, and I now live with my husband in Cambridge, a city that we love so much!
I love reading. Detective stories, novels, popular science books, whenever I have a quiet moment, I you will find me with my e-book reader in my hands. I travel often to see my family in Italy; I miss them a lot and I wish we could see each other more often. I love travelling in general, and I am a big (like BIG) fan of cultural sites and museums, especially the ones about Natural History and/or archaeology. Whenever I go, I always do my best to visit the local ones. I found so many lovely hidden gems this way!
I love creative activities (painting, drawing, writing). I am not very good at them, but who cares? They make me happy, and especially on long days, I always try to set up some time to doodle, draft a story or create something.
I often put on music that I love and dance in my kitchen, especially while cooking. Sometimes my husband joins me, and it is one of my favourite ways to relax and refocus my mind out of “work-mode”.
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
I study how climate changes shape(d) the past and present of human, animals and plants.
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I am a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London. My job title is “biodiversity modeller”, which is a fancy way to say that I do computer analyses to find out where different species live, which is the first step to understand how biodiversity is distributed around the world.
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My Typical Day:
I work on my computer, I don’t do any sampling in the field, or other similar activities. Most of my daily work is coding: writing computer code that performs the analyses I need. Then I run the analyses, and carefully check the results.
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I work on my computer, I don’t do any sampling in the field, or other similar activities.
Most of my daily work is coding: writing computer code that performs the analyses I need. This takes the most of my time, normally. Then I running the code I have written, checking if everything goes smoothly (unlikely) or there are any problems (all the time). Whenever a problem arise I get back to step 1: coding again, trying to find any mistake, fix it, try running it again and so on. When the code works, I need to carefully check the results of the analyses to understand what they mean.
A part of my work that I don’t do on a daily basis (but often enough) is writing scientific articles. In brief: together with my colleagues we write down the job we did, the questions we tried to answer, the results we got, and the most likely explanation for it. Scientific articles (often called “papers”) are written using quite a lot of jargon, and they are difficult to read if you are not working in the field. I don’t like a lot writing in such a complex way, but besides that I love this part of my job. And whenever an article is finished, my colleagues and me share some cake or cookies, which is good!!!!
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I have created a board game about my work that can be freely downloaded from my website (https://michelaleonardi.netsons.org/climate-change-board-game/). I would love to realise a more professional version of it, but prototyping and printing it is quite expensive, so in case I would receive the prize I would definitely create a prototype for it!
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Qualifications:
I studied in Italy, where the system is quite different from the one here. I was living in Rome, where I enrolled in a high school focussing on “humanities”. I studied Italian, Latin and ancient Greek, history and phylosophy… But also maths, physics, biology, English (as a foreign language). I loved science, math, and phylosophy – I was quite bad at latin and greek, but I liked them nevertheless (they are interesting, also if really complicated – too much for me).
I went to University in a different place, Ferrara, which is a small(ish) town not far from Venice, in the northern part of Italy. There I studied prehistoric archaelogy (both Bachelor and Master of Science). Similarly to my high school, I had courses covering both scientific disciplines (physics, maths, biology, zoology, genetics) and the humanities (classical archaeology, art history, geography, etc). This is quite a good reflection of the kind of person that I am both in my work and personal life: I like anything that can tell a story. Science is my favourite way to tell stories, but I also like novels, paintings, buildings, anything that can show us smething about our past, the present, or (sometimes) our future.
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Current Job:
My job title is “biodiversity modeller”, which is a fancy way to say that I do computer analyses to find out where different species live, which is the first step to understand how biodiversity is distributed around the world. In my current role at the Natural History Museum, I work on African plants. In my group we are focussing on different places in Africa where forests have been destroyed, and with our work we are able to suggest which species to replant to regrow the forests. We work both with local communities who wish to recreate the forest in the area they live in, and with international companies specialised in conservation and restoration of the natural habitat, that can help make it real.
To be honest, this is the first time I work on conservation, as I received an education in archaeology. Until very recently I have been working at the University of Cambridge (where I still spend part of my time) mostly studying very ancient species (think about Mammoths and Neanderthals, or the kind of animals you can find in the Ice Age movies). Luckily for me, the methods I have been using to study ancient and extinct species are also useful in supporting conservation. This is why I could get this amazing job at the Museum, and I am so happy to be here!
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Employer:
Natural History Museum, London
University of Cambridge, UK -
My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
a scientist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
I was quite calm and shy, not really a big trouble-maker!
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I would love to work in a museum like a tour guide, or anything involving chatting about science with visitors!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
The Beatles (yes, I am REALLY OLD inside)
What's your favourite food?
Well, I am Italian... I can't live without pasta and pizza, but I also love Victoria sponge cake!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
to be honest I don't know, many of my wildest desires became real (like working at the Natural History Museum in London!). Having the means to live closer to my family is the only one that comes to my mind.
Tell us a joke.
Oh please, not this... I am not a native speaker, I am not great at jokes in English....
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