"I really enjoy understanding the logic of things"

2017/10/05 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingeniaritza
• Berdintasuna
• Elkarrizketak
• Anatomia/Fisiologia
• Matematika

Ainhoa Iñiguez Goizueta recognizes the bad reputation of mathematics: difficult, heavy, boring… For her it has always been easy and entertaining: “When I was bored in school, for example, I started doing operations. Since childhood I have liked the numbers and I enjoy a lot of understanding the reasons or logic behind things. Understanding and explaining, because I remember also collaborating with colleagues with mathematical difficulties.”

So, in addition to Mathematics, he also likes to teach. Therefore, when the time came for him to study the university, he had doubts: “In addition to mathematics and teaching, I like sport. And it also happened to me to study Basque Philology. In the end, I bet on Mathematics.”

In this way, he began to study at the UPV/EHU with excellent results. And yet, at the end of the first year he left: “It was easy and well, but I got the doubt: Is this all? I was expecting more, I was not sure and I thought I had made the wrong choice. I decided to try something applied and entered Architecture. But I didn’t last the whole course,” he recalled.

In the remaining months for the beginning of the next course, au-pair moved to Ireland and, back, to Madrid: “Without further ado I went to the Faculty of Aeronautics and entered some classes to listen to me. Among them, the third class of Mathematics. I didn't understand anything, but I was interested. Then I had all the conviction that I wanted to finish Mathematics studies."

So he returned to the studies of Mathematics. He first spent a year at the University of Barcelona and then returned to the UPV to finish. He confesses that, as he advanced in studies, he was increasingly interested, “probably because I liked the topics I was choosing. So in the fifth year I really enjoyed some issues.”

Looking for your way

That did not happen to him with the thesis. “In the fifth, I had the opportunity to make a collaborative project at the university. At that time, a doctoral student told me it was a stay at Oxford and I thought it could be a good idea to do the thesis there. The truth is that I didn't really want to investigate, but I knew that if I wanted to teach at the university I had to do it. I entered this way, but it has not been easy: the problem chosen has been so complex as expected and I had to look for other collaborations in lack of leadership or support from the thesis director…”

In any case, he also found the way to do so. “There the rowing has a lot of strength, and as I have also been paddling, I tried to look for ties. I was looking forward to working around biomechanics, and after many email messages, I received a response from a New Zealand statistician and went there. There I worked with the New Zealand rowing team sub 23, carrying out biomechanical studies and learning with them.”

This opened the door for him to work in the leading global company in Rowing Biomechanics in Cambridge, as part of last year's Innovation and Technology Committee of the Spanish Paddle Federation. As he explained, “this is how I managed to make a bridge between thesis and sport. In one of them, only algebra was working and in the other, data analysis”.

At the end of the thesis, he performed a substitution at the School of Engineering of Bilbao and last year worked at Mondragon Unibertsitatea. However, his forecasts were not met and he decided not to continue. Also in the sports field, last summer has had the opportunity to participate in two sessions of Tertulia Deportiva in Euskadi Irratia.

This academic year will be devoted to teaching at the Faculty of Engineering of Bilbao and, on the other hand, it enters new lines of investigation by a physicist of the DIPC. “I was wishing to start working on some new topic and I’m enjoying the new opportunity. Anyway, what I enjoy most is teaching, and the goal of this year is to find a good balance between both.”