B. Sc. Chemistry, Heidelberg University, 2023
CRC 2031, +49 (0)89 289 54217
Milena grew up in the historic city of Erfurt in central Germany and attended a STEM focused high school, where she first became interested in chemistry after briefly considering linguistics instead. Following a year of voluntary service in France, she studied chemistry in Heidelberg before returning to France for an Erasmus year at the University of Strasbourg. During her Bachelor Thesis in the Moran Lab, she first met Robert and Maciek, not yet expecting their academic paths to cross again.
She continued her scientific training with a strong focus on organic chemistry during her Master’s at EPFL, working in reaction development and industrial photoredox catalysis at dsm firmenich. Gradually, her interests expanded from pure organic chemistry toward digital and computational approaches. At EPFL, she explored LLM guided retrosynthesis and most recently at ETH Zurich, she developed a computational workflow to model kinetic constants of antioxidant reactivity.
She joined the Mayer Lab for her Master thesis, as it provides an ideal setting to further explore her interest in quantitatively understanding and rationalizing chemical reactivity.
Fun Facts
- Milena relaxes by moving: skiing in winter, windsurfing and cycling in summer, preferably on multi day bikepacking trips or ultra distance rides; the more exhausting, the more mentally relaxing it becomes.
- She keeps a growing private collection of rare and beautiful German words and occasionally wonders how life might have unfolded as a linguist.
- In museums, she insists on reading every single information panel, which usually means friends and family are waiting for her in a nearby café.
Mayer lab at Technische Universität München 