Hi there! My name is Valentina Bais and I am a third year PhD student in Geometry and Mathematical Physics at SISSA (Trieste), working under the supervision of prof. Rafael Torres and Daniele Zuddas. 

My research is in the field of low dimensional topology. I am particularly interested in the study of topological and geometric properties of 4-manifolds, with particular interest in the nonorientable realm. I am amazed by the fact that one can often prove remarkable results about 4-dimensional objects by decomposing them into small simple pieces via handlebody decompositions. I enjoy hands on proofs and I like when people are able to provide explicit descriptions of geometric objects. The tools I used so far in my research to represent 4-manifolds are Kirby diagrams, Lefschetz fibrations and branched coverings.