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<title>Anna Knörr</title>
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<div class="w3-display-bottomleft w3-container"><p>Anna Knörr</p></div>
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<h1 class="w3-center w3-monospace" style="color:White">Hello :)</h1>
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Hi, my name is Anna. I'm currently working as a science communicator at the <a href="https://speed2zero.ethz.ch/">SPEED2ZERO initiative</a> at ETH Zurich.
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Previously, I completed my Bachelor's degree in physics at ETH as well as a master's degree in theoretical physics at <a href="https://perimeterinstitute.ca">Perimeter Institute</a> in Waterloo, Canada. I sure miss the geese :p
<!--a graduate student in theoretical physics at <a href="https://perimeterinstitute.ca/people/anna-knorr">Perimeter Institute</a> in Waterloo, Canada. When I'm dancing in a cypher, call me Atomyka.-->
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What makes a good day? A surprising conversation with a stranger, a smile from a person I care about, a round of yoga and bjj to feel my neurons tingle and a dose of 100% dark chocolate. Whether or not you measure me, it's likely I'll be in a handstand.
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I grew up as a bit of a global nomad: Born in Austria, toddler years on Huntington Beach in sunny California, junior school near Munich, middle school in the little German city with the longest castle in the world. Sixth Form near London, <a href="https://www.konfuzius-muenchen.de/en/scholarships/confucius-institute-scholarship/anna-shanghai-international-studies-university">couple of months on exchange</a> learning 中 文 in Shanghai. University life in Switzerland and <a href="./assets/PSI_report.pdf">Canada</a>, interspersed with an internship at QuEra Computing Inc. in Boston... It's been a journey and it's all but over. I am thankful for this privilege and try to put the things I've learned along the road to good use.
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<p class=w3-center> <i> I hope you find something in this corner of the WWW that makes your time here worth it!</i></p>
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<h1 class="w3-center w3-monospace" style="color:White">What and why?</h1>
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<p class=w3-left-align>This year, I have shifted my main focus from physics to <b>science communication for climate, energy and biodiversity</b>. I am working at <a href="https://speed2zero.ethz.ch/en/">SPEED2ZERO initiative</a> in Zurich for one year, before starting my PhD at the Harvard Quantum Initiative in fall 2024.
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Why did I go for this one-year expedition? While I was a Bachelor and Master student, I was engaged in sustainability <em>on the side</em> of my physics studies. I never seriously questioned (and still don't) studying physics (instead of e.g. politics, environmental engineering, finance etc.), because I felt physics was giving me the foundation I personally wanted for viewing and understanding the world. Being part of sustainability commissions, university politics, event organizing etc. felt like a good combination of interests as well as a nice balance of studying abstract concepts and actually "doing something".
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As I was finishing my master's, however, I felt I needed to rethink my modus operandi with respect to climate action. On the one hand, I wanted to deepen my <b>master's work in quantum science and technology</b> in a PhD. At the same time, the urgency of climate action was burning hot in my head. I felt a strong urge to work full time on climate action and get a clearer picture in my head of where we are heading as a society. Of course, I knew such thoughts would likely have to take a backseat during a quantum PhD. So I made the rather spontaneous decision of deferring my PhD, got back in touch with folks at my alma mater ETH Zurich and joined SPEED2ZERO in September 2023.
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At SPEED2ZERO, I am thrilled to be getting ten months of direct insight into <b>science communication for the science-policy interface</b>. This means experiencing on-the-job what it means for a scientific institution to provide science-based courses of action to policy makers and support them in their decision making process. Concretely, my job is to create formats through which ETH can inform various levels of Swiss government on possible transition pathways towards a net-zero and biodiversity-positive Switzerland.
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<p class=w3-left-align> The best way to know whether you've understood something is when you can explain it.
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I've much enjoyed gaining some first experience in presenting my work as a physics student to technical audiences by ...
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... representing QuEra at the <em>New Frontiers in Quantum & ML</em> workshop at Perimeter (November 2022) --> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wMTeI0xwr8"> talk recording</a>
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... contributing two posters at the <em>Physics meets AI</em> summer school at LMU in Munich (September 2022) --> <a href="https://www.asc.physik.lmu.de/activities/schools/asc_school_2022/book_of_abstracts.pdf"> poster abstracts</a>
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... presenting our "quantum-magical" winter school project at Perimeter (February 2022) together with my PSI-sisters Astha, Carol and Anna B --> <a href="./assets/Magic_Presentation.pdf">quantum magic slides</a>
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... pitching the open-source platform <a href="https://queracomputing.github.io/Bloqade.jl/dev/">Bloqade</a> at the Canadian Graduate Quantum Conference (<a href="https://cgqc2023.wixsite.com/cgqc">CGQC</a>) in January next year!
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I've also had a lot of fun explaining science, math and computing to broader audiences by ...
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... interviewing Prof. Lavinia Heisenberg on her theoretical work on gravity, astronaut aspirations and support for women in science for the magazine <em>Sterne & Weltraum</em> (December 2021) --> <a href="./assets/Interview_Sterne&Weltraum.pdf">interview</a>
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... or writing goofy blog posts on Category Theory as part of the ACT Adjoint School 2021 --> <a href="https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/08/cospans_and_computation_part_1.html#more">part 1</a>, <a href="https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/09/cospans_and_computation_-_part_3.html">part 3</a>.
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<p class=w3-left-align> I am a strong believer in achieving goals together. More broadly, I see life as a communal process of creating. Hence, my main goal in life is to bring people together around shared values that emerge from and change through conversation.
So far, my efforts in this respect have been centered mostly around the theme of climate change.
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Here is a summary of previous projects during my undergrad at ETH, Zurich:
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<li>During my first semesters, I became increasingly involved in the <a href="https://ssc.ethz.ch/"> Student Sustainability Commission</a>. There, my work focused on creating a community to bundle the motivation of individual students from all disciplines.</li>
<li> Similarly, I asked the more specific question of <i>"How can physicists contribute to solving the climate crisis?"</i>. To generate discussion in our own physics department, I organized the <a href="https://www.phys.ethz.ch/the-department/sustainability/nhw2021.html"> Sustainability Week @DPHYS 2021</a> and launched an <a href="https://www.phys.ethz.ch/news-and-events/internal-news/d-phys-intern/2021/06/klima-ich-habe-keine-zeit-gilt-nicht.html">interview series</a>.</li>
<li>I also discussed in depth how to achieve a net-zero university with staff from all corners of ETH - the finance and infrastructure department, ETH Foresight and the ETH Air Travel Project, professors working on carbon capture... These discussions converged in my final semester in spring 2021, when we wrote the internal white paper <i>ETH NettoNull</i> for the Executive Board. <a href="https://ethz.ch/services/en/news-and-events/internal-news/archive/2021/12/eth-sustainability-to-be-realigned.html">First steps</a> towards its implementation are being made.
<li>Before graduating from ETH, I wanted to pass this conviction on to future students. Hence, I pulled together <a href="./assets/EarTH_Magazine.pdf">The EarTH Magazine - Edition Cooperation</a>. Stories of teamwork, compiled from all levels of ETH.
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<p class=w3-left-align>A lesson I learnt overall: <i>Culture eats strategy for breakfast. (Peter Drucker)</i> </p>
<p class=w3-left-align> Now, I am building on these experiences at my current home at Perimeter Institute, Canada. Together with researchers and admin, I formed a climate action working group last year. Our aim was and is to generate an internal culture of "every job is a climate job", even when you are working at a theoretical physics institute.
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In the new year of 2023, I'm excited to organize events together with PI's anti-racism group exploring how to balance two themes: On the one hand, solving climate change through technological innovation such as new energy sources. On the other hand, integrating indigenous knowledge and rewilding the world, thus making the connection between climate change and biodiversity. In this regard, I much enjoyed and can highly recommend the following books:
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<li>All We Can Save (Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katherine K. Wilkinson, 2021)</li>
<li>A Life on Our Planet (David Attenborough, 2020)</li>
<li>Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013)</li>
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Feel free to also peek into the <em>Open Climate Edition</em> of the Branch magazine - a colorful collection of pieces to which I contributed a physics' student perspective in the article <a href="https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-4/the-fermi-problem-of-climate-change/"><em>The Fermi Problem of Climate Change</em></a> (August 2022). It's a personal attempt to get to grips with the orders of magnitude of carbon emissions by putting the typical footprint of a physicist in perspective of the global problem.
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<p class=w3-left-align>I try to write about what I care about. Sometimes I make a video, too :)<br></br>
--> Check out the <em>Who Cares?</em> project, launched with friends at ETH Zurich in summer 2021. Thanks to the whole team for making the interview <a href="https://whocares.ethz.ch/?p=24&lang=de">ConCERNed for Humanity</a> with Michael Dittmar possible! <br>
--> I should also get back to <a href="https://reatch.ch/publikationen/die-schoene-neue-welt-der-daten">thoughts</a> I had on big data & privacy back when I started my undergrad in 2018.
<!-- <p class=w3-left-align>A provoking book, a stirring conversation. Thoughts to rework and forge into a new bundle, to be passed on to the next curious mind! -->
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In Zurich, I absolutely loved curating a couple of editions of VAMP - the magazine of physics and math students at ETH. Here's a collection: </p>
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<li><a href="./assets/brave.pdf">Brave New EarTH</a></li>
<li><a href="./assets/hitchhiker.pdf">The Hitchhiker's Guide to the ETH</a></li>
<li><a href="./assets/kunterbunt.pdf">KUNTERBUNT</a></li>
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Check out my GitHub account for more random fun such as...<br>
... <a href="https://github.com/Atomyka/HyQu-Tool">automating</a> RWA approximations for the HyQu Group at ETH Zurich (May 2021),<br>
... <a href="https://github.com/AlgebraicJulia/CombinatorialChains.jl">implementing</a> MCMC simulations in the language of category theory (July 2021),<br>
... <a href="https://github.com/Atomyka/UWaterloo_eduroam">documenting</a> my success in connecting to eduroam on archlinux :p
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<p class=w3-left-align>Or have a read of my <a href="https://www.konfuzius-muenchen.de/en/scholarships/confucius-institute-scholarship/anna-shanghai-international-studies-university">4-month stay</a> in China! :D</p>
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<p class=w3-center> You can contact me here: <u>aknoerr[at]ethz.ch</u></p>
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