Valentina’s Digital Identity Plan

by VALENTINA CHESSADI by studentsPosted on No Comments

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MVtlCq4nb7PPQa2nWp4JCBDwzhDTE8MR/view?usp=sharing

My Academic & Professional Digital Plan

I recently redesigned my Academic and Professional Digital Identity Plan to make it clearer, more structured, and easier to follow. Instead of a simple list, I organised it into three main pillars — What, How, and Who — each supported by short descriptions. The use of colour-coding and clean categories helped me visualise better the Digital Plan.

WHAT — My Actions Online

I defined the concrete activities I want to carry out: posting and networking on LinkedIn, opening a professional Instagram, and eventually developing a website, blog or YouTube channel.
Content-wise, I will focus on circular economy, advanced materials, recycling innovation, sustainability, lab work, LCA, biotechnology, applied mycology, and entrepreneurship.

HOW — My Tools, Goals and Resources

To support these actions, I identified the key resources I rely on: LinkedIn, Instagram, Canva, my CV, and presentation tools.
My objectives are clear: increase visibility, expand my network, create scientific collaborations, and continue learning.
The main “costs” behind this plan are simply time, energy, and minimal website/blog hosting.

WHO — My Identity and My Audience

I highlighted my value proposition: strong technical skills (materials science, circular economy, LCA), passion for sustainability, and adaptable soft skills like communication, public speaking and problem-solving.
I defined my collaborators (professors, colleagues, communication experts, specialized YouTube channels) and target groups (companies, research centres, EU organisations, startup incubators, and the general public for science communication).

My Strategy: Two Main Goals

This structured plan supports two complementary objectives:

  1. Professional Visibility & Career Growth
    Positioning myself so companies, research centres and organisations can easily understand my profile, discover my work, and identify me as a potential collaborator or employee in the sustainability-related fields that motivate me.
  2. Science Communication & Content Creation
    Building, over time, a space where I can share knowledge, experiments, materials science insights and circular economy perspectives with a wider audience — once I have the time to fully invest in consistent content creation.

Let me know what you think, and if you see any similarities with your own plans!

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Reflections on “Achieving Personal and Professional Success” Course

by VALENTINA CHESSAMOOC CoursesPosted on One Comment

I recently completed the Coursera course Achieving Personal and Professional Success. The course is based on four popular Wharton courses and covers topics from defining success to influence, building trust, and negotiation.

The first module helped me explore what success really means by examining my core values and comparing my beliefs with those of others, including through the “Six Lives” exercise. The second module focused on influence, showing how flexibility, situational awareness, and agency can help navigate organizational dynamics effectively. The third module looked at building trust and cooperation, teaching how vulnerability, warmth, and shared goals foster strong relationships. The fourth module addressed emotion in negotiation, offering practical ways to manage anxiety, diffuse anger, and use humor strategically.

Across the course, I particularly valued the focus on communication, self-reflection, and comparison. Learning to communicate in ways that truly connect with others emotionally and build trust was eye-opening. Exercises that encouraged comparing my perspective with others helped me understand different ways people define success and approach challenges. I also found the strategies for managing anxiety during negotiations extremely practical, showing how emotions influence interactions and outcomes. The discussion of deception was especially interesting, highlighting subtle cues and helping me think about how to navigate situations where trust is uncertain.

What I really appreciated is that this course didn’t just give me tools or frameworks, it made me pause and reflect on myself. I came away with a clearer sense of what success means to me, a better understanding of how I interact with others, and practical ways to approach my goals with more confidence, authenticity, and awareness.

Certificate: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IqjLW_Mvbve0XQosd69JumXB_f-zNwVS/view?usp=sharing

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Circular Economy course by TU Delft completed!! And recommended :)

by VALENTINA CHESSAMOOC CoursesPosted on No Comments

I recently followed the online course “DelftX: Circular Economy: An Introduction” from TU Delft, and it turned out to be much more transformative than I expected.

I started this course already passionate about sustainability and pretty familiar with the basic ideas of the circular economy. But I quickly realized the system is much deeper and more sophisticated than I had imagined. It didn’t just reinforce what I knew—it revealed the real mechanics behind making circularity actually work. These are the ideas that truly expanded my perspective:

1. The Business Model Is the Real Engine
I already understood that circular design matters, but the course showed me that business model innovation is where the real transformation happens. The examples of Caterpillar and MUD Jeans are basically case studies in how to do this right. By shifting from selling products to selling performance, they link their financial success directly to environmental stewardship. Their achievements aren’t niche—they’re proof that the most sustainable option can also be the most competitive.

2. “Value Loops” Have a Meaningful Hierarchy
I knew recycling was important, but the framework of value loops and the “Inertia Principle” gave me a completely new lens. The hierarchy—Repair > Remanufacture > Recycle—isn’t just a nice slogan; it’s an economic strategy to preserve the labour, energy, and complexity already embedded in a product. Seeing how Cat Reman rebuilds a sophisticated engine component to a “like-new” condition, instead of simply melting it down, really showed what it means to keep value circulating at its highest possible level.

3. Design for Disassembly Is Where Circularity Actually Begins
The Fairphone example really brought this home for me. It’s one thing to know that products should be repairable—it’s another to see a company build an entire business around modularity and simple, screwdriver-only repair. I personally support this brand and can say first-hand that it’s genuinely worth it. Fairphone shows exactly what’s possible when repairability isn’t an afterthought but the starting point of the design process. It also highlights the huge gap between a world of disposable, glued-shut devices and one where we have real control over the lifespan of our products.

4. The “Urban Mine” Is the Resource Frontier We’ve Been Overlooking
Ester van der Voet’s work completely reframed how I see cities. Instead of thinking of them as resource consumers, I now see them as our future mines. The aluminium in buildings and the copper in our infrastructure aren’t inevitable waste—they’re some of the richest and most accessible ore bodies we’ll ever have. This shift—from scarcity to smart resource management—changes the whole narrative.

5. Biomimicry Shows What Elegant Efficiency Looks Like
Finally, the course made biomimicry feel much more concrete. The example of Interface designing carpet tiles inspired by the random patterns of a forest floor was a real “wow” moment. It’s such a simple idea, but it eliminates installation waste entirely. It shows how designing like nature isn’t just poetic—it creates systems that are efficient, effective, and fundamentally regenerative.

In the end, this course helped me connect everything together. The circular economy isn’t a set of isolated concepts—it’s a coherent, intelligent system where design, business models, and resource thinking all reinforce each other. It’s practical, it’s viable, and honestly, it’s one of the smartest pathways we have for the future. I’m leaving the course even more convinced of its potential—and its necessity.

I’m sharing the link here because I genuinely recommend it to anyone who wants to understand these topics more deeply:
https://www.edx.org/learn/circular-economy/delft-university-of-technology-circular-economy-an-introduction

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“The Week”

by VALENTINA CHESSASin categoríaPosted on No Comments

Do you know how it feels to grow up in a world that seems to be collapsing because no one seems to care? And then realizing that what you were taught was “good enough” is not even close? Our generation did not grow up in an economic boom, and we rarely hear good news, yet we still try to stay hopeful and take action. We feel responsible for fixing a world we did not fully break, even as we struggle with eco-anxiety.

The documentaries we watched this week captured these feelings well. The first showed the scale of the problem, the second explored daily life through diet, over-consumption, energy, community, isolation, anxiety and the third focused on solutions such as renewables, circular economy projects and reducing environmental impact. Even though I had already heard a lot about this, seeing it all together was inspiring and motivating.

I think the videos were not really aimed at students like us. They were more emotional than scientific, but that approach could really reach older generations. It’s very important that everyone is informed well on climate change but we cannot rely solely on individual action as I believe governments and industries also need to take responsibility and play a very big role.

Talking with my group was amazing. Everyone, coming from different countries, backgrounds, and ages, shared very different perspectives and experiences, and it made me feel less alone in caring. I left the discussions both worried and hopeful. Worried because so much damage has already been done, but hopeful because people are acting and sharing ideas.

Looking ahead, I hope to work in recycling and circular economy projects, making a positive impact on both the environment and society. I wish for a life full of love, care, and community while doing what I can to push for a greener, fairer future.

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Valentina’s Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

by VALENTINA CHESSAContributions to PLE by students.Posted on One Comment
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Hello everybody! I’m sharing my Personal Learning Environment (PLE) here. I’ve divided it into several categories and chose to show it in Venn diagrams to best represent the intersections between the different uses of the apps I use to learn, study and improve myself.
I added in full color the tools I already use and in transparent the ones I would like to implement in the future.

Here are the categories I’ve divided it into, along with some comments:

  • Connecting: For social networks and communication. This also includes Moving, with two social apps for connecting while exercising and traveling, and Google Maps, which I use on a daily basis (yes, I should work on my orienteering skills 😅). A social network I’ve never used but think could be useful to add is X.
  • Meeting: This has become a bigger part of my life especially since the COVID pandemic.
  • Researching, AI, and Academia: I find it very interesting to look for AI tools that can help us do better and more efficient literature research. If you have any suggestions other than SciSpace, let me know! As for other AI apps, I’d definitely like to get used to using more Gemini and Copilot, for example for images and graphic generation.
  • Writing and Analysing: I’ve included software to create text files, reports, notes, and spreadsheets, but also to work on LCA. I’d like to learn to use Overleaf, as it would help me present better-looking reports or a final thesis, for example. I already know a bit of HTML and CSS, but getting used to Overleaf could help me improve more.
  • Pictures and Presentations/Videos: The tool I use the most is definitely PowerPoint, but I’d like to improve in using Canva and learn Adobe and CapCut.
  • Organization: I already use quite a lot of tools, but I’d like to improve with Notion, which I still find pretty messy, but I believe it can be of great help if properly managed.
  • And last but not least, I’ve added Languages and Music, since I’m very passionate about these topics. I’d like to improve playing some instruments like guitar and piano, so I’ve added Yousician, which could guide me with both.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions and see you soon!

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Personal Reflection on Professional Future

by VALENTINA CHESSASin categoríaPosted on No Comments

After watching Yuval Noah Harari’s interview “The 2 Most Important Skills For the Rest Of Your Life”, I felt inspired by his ideas about how important it is to stay adaptable and to truly understand ourselves in such a fast-changing world. As he said in the video, in the future we’ll all need to keep learning and reinventing ourselves, and I completely agree with that. It’s something I already notice in my field and in the way technology and society keep evolving.

In my professional future, I would like to work in the field of circular economy and recycling, contributing to projects that make our world more sustainable. What motivates me most is the idea of creating real impact for example even helping people understand the problems linked to climate change and pollution. I think awareness is the first step, but change also needs collective effort and responsibility from companies and governments

What also inspired me from the video was Harari’s reflection on how technology and artificial intelligence will shape our future. He warned that these tools can be dangerous if we don’t use them wisely, but at the same time, they can offer amazing opportunities. I believe that AI and new technologies could be used to improve education, sustainability and recycling, helping people understand the impact of their actions and create better solutions.

This makes me realize that technical knowledge alone is not enough. I really agree that emotional intelligence is key in such an interconnected and constantly evolving world. In the long term, I believe that the quality of any work depends on the relationships and interaction between people, which are shaped by the soft skills each of us brings. That’s why we need to work on them just as much as on our technical skills.

Let me know if you agree with these reflections, or if the video sparked other thoughts for you! 😊

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Valentina Chessa – Student Presentation

by VALENTINA CHESSAStudents presentationsPosted on 2 Comments

Hii everyone, I’m Valentina! I am from Italy, from a costal town close to Genova. I’ve always been fascinated by science and by understanding how things work and what they mean. This led me to study Materials Science, where I focused on chemistry, physics and engineering. I’m very passionate about sustainability, recycling and the environment. Beyond science, I love basketball, discovering new cultures, learning languages, cooking and trying different vegetarian food and traveling!

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