Pole : Algorithms and discrete structures
Team: Théorie et algorithmique des graphes

I am an assistant professor at IRIF since 2023. I work on combinatorial data reduction, mostly on geometric data. I was born in Hungary and studied mathematics there. I got a scholarship to finish my MSc in France, which lead to my PhD studies at Université Gustave Eiffel and post-doc at IRIF.

I had always been interested in applied mathematics, so in Hungary I specialised in discrete mathematics and algorithms. When I came to France, I learned that this coincides with the theoretical side of computer science and so I am a computer scientist since then. :)

During high school, I was much more excited about sports than studying, so I preferred those subjects which did not require a lot of memorisation: mathematics and physics. For my university studies, I was planning to apply for mechanical engineering. In the final year of high-school, one of my friends decided that she would go to study mathematics, which was a revelation for me — I hadn’t thought about this as a possibility before! Eventually I decided to pick mathematics over engineering, because my dream was to become a university professor.

I used to think that great science is always achieved by men, so initially the most inspiring were those women who were respected and treated as equal by their male colleagues. One early role example was Erika Kovács, a brilliant teacher of mine during my bachelor studies. Along the way, I had the good fortune to have met other outstanding female researchers (such as Claire Mathieu and Valérie Berthé at IRIF) and now I see that great science is simply achieved by enthusiastic minds dedicated to research.

I think many girls get discouraged before they choose a study program. To prevent that, the perception of computer science should change in the common culture and high school education. I feel like there are already some positive changes in France, with initiatives like Fête de la science or Girls Can Code.

On the personal side, I often felt like I only got acknowledged or encouraged because I was one of the few female students. Happily, during my masters internship, my supervisor interacted with me in a fair, professional way, and granted me respect and trust in my research abilities. This was a very impactful experience for me and surely contributed to me pursuing a PhD.