Please give us a personal quote or a quote of a famous person (e.g. of Albert Einstein) that describes you and your life/work.
“Scientist have a special responsibility, a moral responsibility, in ensuring that science serves the interest of humanity in the best possible way.” 14th Dalai Lama

Please describe your job in only one sentence and tell us what the most important goal of this work is.
I make planets in my computer. I put some rocky core, I let the planet accrete some H, He and water (and some other “heavy elements”), and voila, you get (sometimes) a giant planet. The importance of what I do is the addition of the heavy elements in the atmosphere of the growing planets. This effect was not considered before, and it can be very important to understand the composition and formation path of intermediate mass planets, such as Neptune.

How did you get into this research/work field?
I always liked stars, so I decided to study astrophysics in my home country, Uruguay. Later, a friend that was doing a postdoc in Switzerland let me know about an open PhD position. I applied, and that is how I ended up in this planetary business.

What would be the greatest discovery you would like to see in your life time?
In science, as everybody else in this community, I would really like that we find some strong evidence regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life. Regarding humanity, I would like that we find an alternative way of living to this wild capitalism that is creating more and more inequality, alienation, indignity and planetary devastation. But I suppose the first wish is more accomplishable than the second one…

You work for the NCCR PlanetS. What do you think will the NCCR enable you to do you couldn’t do without it?
It gives me the opportunity to interact with people with different backgrounds inside the planetary sciences.