A day in the life of a physicist

About the Artist:

I am a Vera Rubin Postdoctoral Fellow at Perimeter Institute working on the interface of numerical relativity simulations and gravitational wave analysis. I sketch a lot in my everyday work to visualize concepts and to help myself organize my thoughts. I have been drawing since a young age and it was the only activity (along with solving trigonometry problems) that would make me sit at the table in silence and tame my energetic mind. The habit of drawing has stuck around and turned into a sort of meditation in my adult life. My art consists of simple doodles, which often portray imaginary worlds and, most importantly, the night sky. It is common to see fir trees, wooden huts and meadow flowers in my illustrations – all natural symbols of a Russian village landscape, which shaped my love for nature during my childhood.

In the sequence of illustrations portraying “A day in the life of a physicist” you will see lots of references to my work as a numerical relativist. Some books and concepts may sound familiar to you, or perhaps you even heard of the GRChombo code (https://www.grchombo.org/) that is widely used in numerical simulations of binary black holes and many other exciting compact objects. With this sequence of sketches, I hope to remind science enthusiasts, early career researchers and students that it is normal to face challenges with research and that it often does not go the way we envision it at first: derivations do not make sense, ideas do not work out, codes crash… Solutions to problems do not always come to your mind immediately and sometimes you will find them in circumstances you would expect to help you the least, like enjoying a hobby or talking to your colleagues or loved ones about something unrelated. So, next time you find yourself being stuck on a problem, I hope that you take a deep breath and remind yourself “it’s okay, I have got this”.