When we work, we are not alone. Every day we share and collaborate with our colleagues. And each one has a special identity that characterizes him or her. At ALMA, we make sure that these differences are valued and respected.

An example of this is Andrea Corvillón, our Proposal Handling Team Lead, who has been working at ALMA for more than 8 years, and has just won the “Respect and Diversity” award at the last Fundamental Statements Awards. “I was very happy. The truth is that I didn’t expect it, so it was a nice surprise, a very nice recognition,” says Andrea.

As leader of the team in charge of handling the observation proposals, Andrea has always embodied her way of being: “One of my main objectives is that the review of the proposals is done in the fairest possible way, that there is no bias by gender, race, seniority in the field, etc. It was nice to see that this is also seen and translated into my daily work,” said Andrea.

Andrea recently participated in the “Peer-Review Under Review” workshop, organized at ESO-Garching, Germany, where she shared her experience applying distributed peer review, double anonymity review, biases in the review process, as well as plans to incorporate machine learning in proposal assignments. It was certainly a great opportunity to exchange experiences on how to improve the respective review processes.

Reading: Although I like to read, I don’t dedicate much time to it, but with the arrival of my daughter I read a little more and about topics that would not have interested me before. That’s how I came across the book “El cerebro de los niños explicado a los padres”, by Alvaro Bilbao, a Spanish neuropsychologist. This book gives a very good account of what is going on in the brains of young children and how that translates into their behavior. Although the book is clearly focused on parents and young children, from my point of view it also helps a lot to understand adults. For example, we are all much more receptive when we are offered additional options rather than being told ‘don’t do that’ and that’s it.

See: Gilmore Girls, not a must-see, but I like it. It’s a series that started in 2000, so it has several things that maybe don’t look so good with today’s mentality, and that one says “But that’s so sexist!” or “Why does she put up with that!”, but for some reason I like it. Maybe it makes me remember simpler times, as I used to watch it when I was in school and my big responsibility was to study. Now that it’s on Netflix I go back to watch it every so often. I think I’ve watched it in its entirety about 4 or 5 times now.

Do / Practice: Ashtanga Yoga. I’ve practiced sports most of my life, but I came to Mysore-style Ashtanga in 2019, and that’s where I stayed. It’s a more dynamic and physically demanding type of yoga, but super flexible. Learning the postures everyone goes at their own pace and according to their physical abilities, which helped that I was able to continue practicing without problems during my pregnancy and until days before my daughter was born. After my daughter was born I didn’t practice for 2 years, but a few months ago I started again and it’s amazing how it helps me physically and mentally.