The risk group at UNIL specializes in the study of natural hazards and risks induced by surface and atmospheric phenomena, and their perception and impact on society. The ThinkSwiss scholarship gave me the opportunity to be on the ground and experience the very wide range of remote sensing techniques to study instabilities, at different scales, from satellite data to geological fieldwork acquisitions, and try to improve the processing and the analysis.

ThinkSwiss helped me fund my research internship in Switzerland. Although my research was in geomatics and the environment, I worked on completely interdisciplinary approaches in the Remote Sensing Laboratory, as a part of the research project exploring ways of closing the yield gap in African smallholder agriculture and requiring adaptation of feasible cultivation practices. Understanding loopholes and exchanging ideas to improve my design and configuration made it a great learning environment, broadening my perspective on my next steps.

Switzerland is full of great hikes, mountains, lakes and medieval history. I have never visited such a scenic country that is so close to nature. The amount of research that happens in Switzerland in the field of Computer Science is unparalleled to any other country. Switzerland is definitely the place for research and higher studies.

Geneva has a great natural environment conducive to research in the social sciences as it hosts several international organisations including blocks from the United Nations Office at Geneva, International Labour Organization, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, World Intellectual Property Organization, etc. Thanks to ThinkSwiss, this was my first venture abroad and I am really motivated to pursue research in Human Rights after this for further studies.

Right from my very first day, I was very impressed by the level of organisation in the group. Each individual project in the lab was somehow contorted to fit the larger vision of the team. I highly recommend Switzerland, in particular for biomedical research, from my experience.