dr Aleksandra Friedl

She graduated in Technical Physics from the Cracow University of Technology (specializing in condensed matter physics) with an MSc thesis entitled Transport elektronowy w układzie kropek kwantowych [Electron Transport in a Quantum-Dot System]. For her PhD dissertation, she chose a subject that straddled the boundary between physics and biophysics and dealt with the mechanical unfolding of protein molecules with the use of an atomic force microscope. She spent four months in Switzerland within the framework of a fellowship funded by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, performing preliminary protein unfolding measurements. In 2007, she defended her PhD doctoral dissertation, entitled Badanie procesu rozwijania białek za pomocą AFM [Studying the Process of Protein Unfolding with the AFM"] at the Faculty of Applied Spectroscopy at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, which was funded from a research grant. Between 2007 and 2010, she worked within the Optical Biosensors team at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. During that period, she was responsible for the Atomic Force Microscopy Lab, where she carried out measurements of biosensor samples and conducted her own individual mini-project that involved generating optical structures with fourfold symmetry within the framework of the European Pathomilk project.

After returning to Kraków, she changed her occupational field and between 2013 and 2018 worked as a corporate accountant, spending nine months as a Junior Accounts Receivable Accountant at IBM BTO, and then four years in the General Ledger Department at Genpact PL.

Since February 2019, she has served as the Scientific Coordinator for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the National Science Centre, combining her recent customer service experience with a past in research.

In her leisure time, she reads psychological novels and goes hiking in the Beskid Mountains with her daughter at the weekends.