Less than a decade ago, Lucero Alvarez Miño was finishing high school in Bogota, Colombia. Today, she's studying condensed matter at The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. In between, she witnessed one of the most historic events of the late 20th century: the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Physics on the Move

Lucero Alvarez Miño first encountered physics when she was a junior in high school. "My interest in physics was evident during the first few classes. I was fascinated by the mind-puzzling problems that physics presented. I knew in high school that's what I wanted to do."

In early 1987, Alvarez entered Colombia's National University in her home town of Bogota. She had every reason to believe that she would be spending the next five years commuting between home and campus earning a degree in physics.

But Alvarez's life took a sharp turn to the east six months after graduating from high school, when she learned that she had received a fellowship to study at the University of Kharkov in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.

"I had never crossed the borders of Colombia. Now, I was given an opportunity to travel more than 10,000 kilometres from home. I didn't know the language, I didn't know the culture. I didn't even know what the weather was like. But I knew I had to go. So, I packed my suitcase, had a long good-bye with my parents and sister, and off I went."

When she arrived at Kharkov, an industrial city of two million people, Alvarez learned that the University's physics department was welcoming some 80 new students-71 from the Soviet Union, two from Colombia, three from Cuba, and one each from Ethiopia, India, Sri Lanka and Spain.

"It was a cultural shock. But physics provided a foundation for all the foreign students. It was a way of communicating in an environment where other forms of communication were difficult."

Within a year, Alvarez had acquired a working knowledge of Russian and had narrowed her fields of interest in physics to condensed matter. She settled into a relatively comfortable life as a foreign exchange student.

Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine emerged as an independent nation for the first time in more than 70 years.

"The fall of communism had a tumultuous impact on science throughout the former Soviet Union. The Department of Physics at the University of Kharkov was by no means exempt from these historic events. The situation has become even worse since I left. Today, professors go unpaid."

"Students also had a rough time. Under communism, all graduates with advanced science degrees were guaranteed jobs. After the fall of the Soviet Union, students were told they would have to fend for themselves-and there were simply no jobs."

"I thought about leaving. But I had put in three years at the University. I was afraid that I would lose credit for all of that time if I quit and went home. Besides I loved the people. The multi-culturalism that made it difficult for the Soviet Union to stay together also made it an interesting place to live."

So, Alvarez stuck it out-a young Latin American physics student living in exile in Ukraine during a period of revolutionary change. Only in 1994, with her degree in hand, did she return to Colombia.

Now, after spending the last two years teaching physics to prospective engineers in her home country, she's on the road again. The setting is different but the goal remains the same: to earn a doctorate in physics that would give her an opportunity to teach full-time at a university.

Alvarez will graduate from ICTP's Diploma Course next October. She will then be off to a university-perhaps in the United States-to earn a doctorate in physics.

"A doctorate in physics has been a dream of mine since high school," says Alvarez, "and I've been fortunate enough to pursue that dream in some unusual places."

"Who knows what's next. I'm certain, however, that I will eventually return to Colombia as a full-time physics professor at the National University. I've seen the world, but I hope to spend most of my career in the country of my birth."

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