Jonathan Dietz Email & Phone Number

What I love most about being an engineer is problem solving. Be it relating to simulation, design or project management, there are few things as satisfying as tackling and overcoming a challenge. As my varied engineering background suggests, it is really the breadth of the field that drew me to it. When deciding between different fields of study after having finished high school, it was the combination of many different areas of expertise that chemical engineering offers that convinced me. During the last year of my bachelor's studies, I visited many different presentations about the various fields that ETH offers on the master's level. In the end, while I am still passionate about chemical- and process engineering, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to learn about such a specialized, but still interdisciplinary, field as nuclear engineering. There are still plenty of opportunities to apply my chemical background in this new field and being able to include this unique combination of skillsets in my Master's Thesis and subsequent research work at Paul Scherrer Institute has been very fulfilling.A principle part of my work has been relating to programming. There are few things that lend themselves as well to problem solving as coding, be it writing it from scratch to tackle a specific issue or taking over the extension and execution of previously existing programs and routines. During my internship at Nagra (National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste), where I handled and analyzed protected nuclear data and was crucially involved in adapting new simulation routines into the department's workflow, I made my first experiences working in a diverse and international team.Towards the end of my Master's Studies, I joined the Advanced Nuclear Systems and Multiscale Materials Modelling groups at Paul Scherrer Institute for a Semester Project, my Master's Thesis and a followup position as Scientific Assistant. Taking over working with and continuing development on the EQL0D routine for simulation of molten salt reactors was exactly the right combination of coding, problem solving and chemical and nuclear topics for me. During my thesis as well as employment thereafter,I worked as part of the international molten salt reactor project SAMOSAFER, which combines the efforts of many universities across the world to design and simulate a working molten salt reactor.I pride myself on my ability to think critically and analytically, and strive to extend my skills learned from university and prior work experiences to new areas of application.