[Women in Science] Beyza Bozdemir, PhD in Digital Security, EURECOM
1. Why did you choose to pursue the career of engineering?
BB. I want to emphasise my passion for cryptography: how I started my journey and took steps to research cryptography. I am always interested in solving problems. I was solving them in my high school years, and when I was reading Dan Brown’s books, I met ciphers. They made me very enthusiastic about cryptography. I wanted to go deeper into cryptography and searched that I could study a Master study at the Institute of Applied Mathematics (where was the only one at that time) at METU, which is one of the best universities in Turkey. Therefore, I decided to study Mathematics at METU, the best way to study cryptography since cryptography and Mathematics have a strong correlation. During my Bachelor study in mathematics, I took elective courses such as discrete mathematics, number theory, field extension and Galois Theory, and mathematical aspects of cryptography to establish my knowledge about cryptography. I passed these courses with excellent scores.
2. What obstacles did you have to overcome to achieve your dream?
BB. Mathematics and/or cryptography seemed to be hard to understand at the beginning but the consistent hardworking, the desire for achieving my goals, and being stubborn not to stop working on different math concepts such as understanding the theorems (Euler or Fermat little theorems), proving those theorems and related lemmas, applying them on solving other problems, and cryptography concepts like NP or NP-hard problems, or complexity of the cryptographic algorithms which should be efficiently working on the system made me overcome those problem. With the success of understanding, I believe myself to handle any problems that I listed and did not listed here. I know any time we can learn a new topic from any one or by ourselves, just believe and make it exist!
I would like to give an obstacle example during my PhD study. I started my PhD in May 2018. When we got married in 2019, my husband came to France by taking a 1-year visa. Approaching the 1-year end, we tried to extend his visa in France, but we discovered that we could not do it here, and he had to go to our country and renew his visa there. As you understand from the year(s), he had to leave France just two weeks before we went to the quarantine in France, and he could not come to France till March 2021. After he left, my health was not good: I had to take sick leave for a while, but the same me, I told my doctor to stop the sick leave; otherwise, I could not finish my PhD on time which I did not want. I resumed my research again after this little leave: I published two papers in 2020, and 1 paper was under submission. Moreover, I worked with master students and started to study two new topics for my PhD. I know the Covid19 situation is bad for each of us but imagine you are married but alone in another country and you are stressed about your health, your life and his life, and also your PhD, which is the reason you are abroad. I tried to make everything on the way and I am so happy since we as a couple handled this. Finally, I successfully got my PhD.
3. What is the next step in your career after your PhD?
BB. As a personality, being ambitious for self-improvement, being passionate about my goals, and being a good team player have always been set me apart from others. Thanks to my desire for success, my past is full of enduring accomplishments, and I believe I will be one of the good cryptographers one day.
4. What is the message you would like to give to young girls for following a PhD in science and engineering?
BB. Believe in yourself and listen to others such as your supervisor or family, but do and accomplish what you would like to desire! Also, please know that anytime we can learn a new topic by ourselves or anyone, just believe and make it real!
