Photo: Håkan Soold

“I work on a project where ten European universities collaborate in research on how human body odours could enhance psychological treatment,” Vigna says.

The data from the clinical studies Vigna and her colleagues are working on, they receive from the University of Padua in Italy. She does the data analysis and write the results sections in the research papers.
The fact that this is an international research project means that she gets to travel quite a bit.

“Mostly, we travel for dissemination activities at research conferences. Whenever we have a study that is complete we want to show the results to the scientific community.”

Has great use of her master´s education

At work she feels that she has great use of her master's studies at the Department of Public Health Sciences, especially what she learned in the statistics, data analysis and methology courses.

“So my recommendation for students as well as prospective students is, if you want to work in research you need to spend time on that: statistics, data analysis and methodology. Exercise with it. That is important.”

Before starting her job at Karolinska Institutet, Elisa worked at a reinsurance company in Switzerland. There, her tasks was pretty much the same as those she´s doing now at Karolinska Institutet. Obviously, with the exception that the kind of data was quite different.

“In Switzerland I was working with old age mortality in the USA. The company wanted to know what the life expectancy growth rate is there. For them as a company offering life insurances that´s very important. They need to know what the life expectancy in the population could be in 20 or 30 years for example,
“There are a lot of private companies that hire public health experts or epidemiologists to do research for them.”

Took her bachelor´s in Parma

Vigna is from Turin in Italy and took her bachelor´s degree in psychology at the University of Parma. She studied neuroscience, which is a very good programme they´re giving there, she says. At first she was considering taking her master´s degree in that field, but then she changed her mind and settled for public health sciences.

“I wanted to do something that would allow me to use the psychology that I had studied, but also broaden things up a little bit towards sociology and health.”

After some searching on Google she found out about public health sciences and thought it sounded interesting. After doing some more searching she found the master´s programme in public health sciences at Stockholm University and applied.

Likes Stockholm a lot

University education in Sweden is quite different from that in Italy, Vigna says. 

“But I really liked it. It´s a very good way of teaching. In Italy they give you a book and they tell you: `Learn all of it! And then repeat it to me´. There´s no critical thinking. They don´t teach you how to analyse a problem or an issue or to search for articles or to work independently,

“Here in Stockholm I could integrate all the things I´ve learned in the bachelor, with new knowledge on public health. I also learned how to write my own papers, do my own research, analyse research questions, read different papers that have different perspectives and integrate all of those things. That´s something that we really miss in Italian education.”

Life as a student in Stockholm is very good, Vigna says. 

“Parma is a very small city, there isn´t much to do there. So moving to Stockholm was a huge improvement. There is a lot to do here if you like nature, hiking or sports. Also, shopping is good here, as are restaurants and nightlife. It´s a very nice city to live in.”

As for her future plans, she might consider going back to the university and take a PhD. But, since it is an important commitment, she is waiting for a PhD opening that would fit her interests in terms of topic. And although she´s open for opportunities in other countries, her PhD could very well be taken in Stockholm.

“I guess I´ve got the Stockholm syndrome.”

Håkan Soold