Christof Teuscher

One of my first major experiences with electricity was at 10, when I tried to measure how much current comes out of a power outlet with an ampere meter. That didn’t go well and resulted in an all-day power outage of our house and a melted ampere meter. Yet, that only made me more curious and in the next 10 years, I spent a major part of my free time soldering together electronic circuits for all kinds of applications. For example, I remember that my brother and I once built a remote controlled electronic ignition for fireworks. We felt like working for NASA. My first experience with computers consisted in watching my dad writing programs on a Commodore C64 computer, one of the first affordable personal computers. Soon, my brother and I knew much more about the peculiarities of programming that magic machine than my dad, after which he simply passed it to us kids and bought the first Apple Macintosh for himself. Needless to say that at that time, there was no e-mail and web.

The path to what I do today in life has been all but straight. The reason is maybe that I have a tendency for doing things in unconventional ways and don’t like to go with the main stream. I found alternative paths and decisions always more exciting and rewarding. After secondary school, I decided to seriously learn how to deal with electronics, electricity, electro mechanics, and computers, and therefore went to technical high school to become an electronics engineer. This was a great experience and made me a handyman for pretty much all technical things. My mentor taught me to always ask the question how you would fabricate a given object. Try it for yourself, it gives you a completely new perspective and appreciation of objects! I also had the occasion to participate in both the Swiss and the European contest for young scientists with a wind speed computer that I had developed with a friend. This unique experience paved the way to becoming a scientist later, and opened the new world of science and discoveries to me, which I wasn’t aware of before. After finishing technical high school, I really couldn’t imagine working in industry, maybe repairing TVs or computers, for my whole life, so I decided to go to college and university. I thought I’d go back to industry later, and becoming a scientist wasn’t the plan at all. At that time, I wasn’t sure whether to go for physics, math, or computer science. I’ve always been very fascinated by physics, but I felt that I lacked serious inherent talent that one needs to become really good in a field, so I went for computer science since I’ve become quite gifted with these stubborn machines over the years.

I’ve never been gifted with learning foreign languages and French and English really made me suffer a lot in college. Nevertheless, always attracted by challenges, I decided to go to university in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I ended up staying for 8 years, getting both my Masters and PhD degree in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. To my general surprise, I learned French to perfection rather easily. Compared to learning a foreign language at school, one is completely embedded in the foreign environment and I didn’t have to learn futile words and grammar.  When I started at university, I didn’t quite know what a PhD degree was and how to get one. However, in my 3rd year as a Master’s student, I unexpectedly got a summer job in a lab at my university and that’s when I discovered the real fascination of science.  Among many other things, this summer job also led to my first scientific publication and a trip to a conference in the US. From then on, I knew that science was what I wanted to do in life, and the decision to get enrolled in a PhD program was straightforward.

My PhD advisor was totally amazing, supported me unconditionally, and always encouraged me to do what I like and to like what I do. No sooner said than done! After my PhD, my wife and I both obtained a fellowship to do research at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). We thought we’d stay a year or two in the US and then go back to Switzerland. That was in 2004. We’re still here and have no intention whatsoever to go back.

After my postdoc at UCSD, I became a postdoc at LANL, and later a Technical Staff Member. My current research focuses on the most exciting and adventurous part of computer science: the computers for the next 5-20 years. This cutting-edge research is about pushing fundamental and technical limits, realizing visions, and doing things that no one has imagined would happen a few years ago. It never gets boring because every day is a step into no man’s land, where lots of open questions and challenges are waiting. I’m a scientist because I’m curious by nature, love to explore the unknown, and can’t find rest until I know how things work or how a challenging problem can be solved.