My international journey by Kevin Heng

"I grew up in Singapore and studied Physics and Maths there. I was then determined to go to the United States for my graduate education. So, 18 applications later, I ended up in Colorado, in a completely foreign country to me, where I did my Masters and PhD.

In the last year of my PhD, I met my wife, who was there on an exchange from Germany. To my credit, I saw her as my future wife about a month after we met! I then followed her to Munich where I did a post-doc. We married in Germany because that made it much easier for her to join me when I took up my next position.

This was a three-year fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton University. Most of the thinking behind my science and the way I operate was established at Princeton. I brought a lot of the philosophy of science and management with me from the IAS to the University of Bern.

After two years at the ETH Zurich, I came to the University of Bern in 2013, was tenured in 2015 - which was nice - and became director of the Center for Space and Habitability in 2016."