Goodbye and good luck to Dr Alejandra Beghelli!
We are sad to say goodbye to Dr Alejandra Beghelli, but wish her all the best in her new role at BT!
Last week, we wished Dr Alejandra Beghelli farewell as she starts a new adventure at BT. Alejandra joined UCL in 2020 as a lecturer in optical communications and networks, but this wasn't her first time working with the team. Before becoming the research superstar she is today, she completed her PhD at UCL under the supervision of TRANSNET's director, Professor Polina Bayvel! Alejandra has been an integral part of the team, reflected by her numerous awards in academic excellence and teaching, but her expertise and kindness will be missed most of all.
While at UCL, Alejandra has been working on research allocation in optical networks and reinforcement learning applied to optical networking. She has worked on numerous publications under the TRANSNET project, making invaluable contributions towards our mission of introducing network intelligence to maximise the capability of optical fibre communications networks. She has also been a beloved mentor of early-career researchers; research assistant Anuj Gore had this to say on working with Alejandra:
"In a nutshell, Alejandra is one of the nicest people I've ever met. As a supervisor, she is very honest and does a really good job in managing expectations. My current paper is the first one I've published, so I was very nervous. Alejandra didn't give me any false hopes about it being accepted, while not implying that it would be rejected either. She can phrase criticism very positively too - when my first draft of a conference paper read more like a journal paper, she told me "the good news is that you know how to write journal papers!". She has always been open and approachable while slowly giving you the confidence to conduct research by yourself. She is great in helping you grow as a researcher, and we had a good discussion about where I want my career to go with her pointing me to the correct places and people to talk to".
We would like to thank Alejandra for all that she has done with the team over the last 4 years, and are grateful that her new office isn't too far from UCL! We wish her the best of luck at BT and can't wait to see her impact on the industry side of communications.