Living for the Constants in Life

For three years, Gabriela commuted from St. Gallen to Zurich on a daily basis, from her parents’ house to ETH Zurich university. “I didn’t even have to change trains”, she says, explaining her decision. It’s the small things that determine her life’s major paths. So to describe Gabriela as an enthusiast would be probably be a slight exaggeration. And yet, it would also be a mistake not to do so.

120 millimeters in length, a 12 millimeter shaft diameter and a sensor head jam-packed with electronics. The dimensions in which Gabriela works are small and compact. At Hamilton in the canton of Graubünden, she is dedicated to researching and developing new process sensors. “When I accepted this job, I had no idea what lay in store for me.” Today, what she values above all is the interdisciplinary collaboration. For every project, there’s a different team, and each team is made up of members from different disciplines: chemists, physicists, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. One thing that doesn’t change is the role Gabriela plays in all of these, where she contributes her expertise as a mechanical engineer. “If I were surrounded exclusively by mechanical engineers, then I probably wouldn’t be able to learn many new things.”

Some of the work done by these teams includes the development of sensors for use in the biopharmaceutical industry. “The aim is to ensure that the desired active ingredient can be produced”, comments Gabriela, explaining the purpose of her work in everyday language. In technical jargon: the sensors monitor all the critical parameters required to monitor bioprocesses in real time, including dissolved oxygen, pH value, cell density and conductivity. This makes it possible for the process to be controlled. It can take years to take the initial idea and implement it in practice. Until then, it’s a question of developing, testing, developing, testing – or “tinkering”, as Gabriela likes to call it – until the initially centimeter-wide sensors measure only 12 millimeters.

Gabriela explains that it was pure coincidence that she ended up in her profession. It was by chance that she attended a springboard event in the canton of Graubünden, a coincidence that Hamilton sparked her interest, and a stroke of good fortune that they had a vacant position to be filled. And yet, despite all these coincidences, Gabriela, the mechanical engineer, is nothing if not consistent. Even as a child, she took a keen interest in the production business her father ran. Whenever it was “Bring your child to work day”, she would be there with him and then, in the summer holidays, she would accompany him to work. “The people there knew me by that point.” Later on, she opted to study mathematics and physics as specialist subjects. Not out of a passion for those subjects, she stresses, although “there were very few women”, but certainly interest.

Her family brought a second constant into her life too: hiking in the Appenzell Alpstein range near her parents’ house. Today, she can still be found regularly up in the mountains, with her family and her boyfriend. And once a year, she takes a trip with her former co-students. They walk for six or seven hours, spend the night in a mountain hut, eat heartily together, and then make their way back down the next day with much laughter and aching muscles. “This year was the only year we were not able to find a date that worked for everyone”, she said.

Whenever there is a new project brewing at work, Gabriela dives in at the deep end once more. This could be, for instance, making her employer’s products cheaper and more reliable – or even taking over the leadership of a team at just 26 years of age, as was the case for Gabriela a year ago. “The role came as a surprise”, she says. But learning something new is where Gabriela feels most in her element. When she accepted the management role, she laid down one condition: “I wanted to keep developing at all costs.” Gabriela may be a pragmatist, but you cannot deny her enthusiasm.