Nicole is an Australian who moved to Eindhoven in the Netherlands in March 2007 to begin a PhD at TU/e.
She holds BE(Hons)/BSc degrees in civil engineering and computer science from the University of Melbourne and a MEngSc in computer science and software engineering, also from Melbourne. Her masters thesis investigated how agent-based modelling is used to model pedestrian behaviour. Her PhD research investigates how social influences on activity and travel behaviour can be modelled, again using agent-based modelling.
Nicole has travelled to Europe twice before. In 2005 she spent two weeks in Riga, Latvia and Stockholm, Sweden. In 2006 she spent three weeks travelling from Stockholm, Sweden to Frankfurt, Germany via Gothenburg, Malmö, and Hamburg. In 2007 she spent three days in London before travelling to the Netherlands. During her time living in Eindhoven, she has visited many cities in the Netherlands, as well as Belgium, Germany, Norway, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg.
She can speak Swedish at an advanced beginner level, studied French for her school-leavers exam (which came in useful for the first time in ten years during a trip to Brussels and for a second time in Luxembourg — still working towards a trip to France), and has taught herself some basic German. She passed the Staatexamen (NT2-II) in April 2009 and is therefore done with Dutch studies, despite not being anywhere near fluent or capable of having a serious conversation. In her spare time, she tries to learn Portuguese from a Dutch-language book — it adds to the challenge — and will begin German classes (also with Dutch as the base language) in September 2009.
If you would like to contact Nicole outside this blog, her gmail login is expatnumbat.
