“I love it when your heart, head and hands interact”

Elena Dürst, were there many other female students on your electrical engineering course at ETH?

ELENA DÜRST: No, there were very few of us. Of the 180 students on the Bachelor’s course, there were just five females.

Did you feel like a pioneer or was it more a case of feeling different and standing out?

It was only a few years ago I realised that during my education and professional life I have almost always been surrounded by men and so I’ve hardly ever had female colleagues to chat to. So I haven’t ever really felt special. In fact, when I was a child, I mainly just wanted to be normal.

Weren’t you?

No, I’m afraid not. When I was in third grade, my primary school teacher contacted my parents to advise them to urgently have me assessed as highly gifted. We found that in mathematics at the age of 9 I was at the level of a 15 year old. My parents sent me to an international school where I had to speak English. I was literally silenced and hardly spoke a word for a year out of fear of making a mistake. I was incredibly lonely and really wanted to just be a normal kid; instead I was at least a head shorter than anyone else and suffered from being labelled as “highly gifted”.

How did you discover what career you wanted to pursue?

After a year at the international school, luckily I found my way again in a state school. Thanks to a great teacher and good friends, my confidence in myself was soon restored. My parents, who had both had a very simple upbringing, had instilled in me the belief that it’s important to make the most of opportunities and work your way up through the ranks. Because I had skipped a year at school, I had completed my school-leaving exams at just under the age of 18. I was too young to volunteer in Honduras, which I really wanted to do, and I didn’t have the confidence to study psychology because in those days the course only attracted people who didn’t have any other options.

Why did you choose electrical engineering?

When I was at secondary school, we visited a company that developed circuit boards for hearing implants. At the time I remember thinking how it would be great if I could use my mathematical skills for a social purpose. So I studied electrical engineering and biomedical technology. Although I hadn't had a computer for long and really wasn't a nerd, I learnt quickly and did well on the course. Unfortunately my plan to get a job afterwards with the hearing aid manufacturer Phonak (now Sonova) didn't work out. Because I was good at programming and was able to develop software, I increasingly veered towards information technology.

It doesn’t exactly sound like you were too impressed with this…

Early on I realised that I needed something to counterbalance the intellectual demands of this work – something like belly dancing, pilates and frequent extensive travel. What I have always enjoyed about software development is the challenge of finding simple, elegant solutions to complicated problems. For example, with my first employer my colleagues and I programmed the software for a coffee machine. For the consumers who operate the machine, it’s a very simple thing, but for the team of ten who had to worry about all the details, it was a year’s work.

How have your trips changed the way you see your work?

In 2016, I took a 15-month sabbatical and travelled to India on public transport going via Italy, Croatia and Greece. In Greece, I spent two weeks helping out in a refugee camp on the island of Leros – and discovered how satisfying it is to undertake such directly meaningful work. I was overcome by what I saw in India and felt hugely connected – perhaps this was something to do with my daily meditation. Back in Zurich, I felt torn between my job and those areas of my life where I really wanted to do something of social relevance. Because I didn't get a place on the ETH post graduate course in Development and Cooperation, I reduced my working hours to 80 percent to leave me scope to volunteer on social projects.

Almost two years ago, you embarked on training to become a shiatsu therapist. How did that come about?

As a client, I already had some experience of shiatsu. After the first covid lockdown, myself and my boyfriend went on a shiatsu course. I was stunned with how simple an activity can have such an effect. By hands being carefully placed at various points on his body, my boyfriend experienced an extreme sense of relief. After the course, the therapist, my boyfriend and I agreed that it was something I could do. So I started my four-year training shortly afterwards.

What do you like about this manual form of therapy that is based on traditional Chinese medicine?

The biggest problem with the jobs I have had to date is that I have always thought that they could develop my brain and connect it to a computer – the rest of my body didn't matter. But shiatsu places demands on all of me - my hands, my head, my intuition. I see the uniqueness of every person without being judgemental. There is no simple line between right and wrong. Of course, you need specialist knowledge, for example about the significance of the meridian and how it affects our organs and mind. But when it comes to the detail, we can't fully understand how it all interacts. It’s challenging but above all very liberating. I love the way that your heart, head and hands interact.

You are currently working 70 percent hours in the field of bioinformatics in a research lab at the University of Zurich. Once you've

completed your shiatsu training in 2025, do you then hope to pursue two careers in parallel?
At the moment, the balance is very good for me and I can well imagine combining the two activities later on too. At a very early stage in my training I felt drawn towards the aspects of the shiatsu therapy that I really value – working with a focus on the body, the social aspect, interpersonal interactions. But for a long time, I felt that my brain was compelling me to do something intellectually outstanding. Added to this was the fact that this approach meant I was guaranteed to be accepted by society. People are always astounded when you tell them that as a woman you have a degree in electrical engineering from ETH. Finding a path through life that fits with what you believe in is a comparatively lonely task and you don’t get much acclaim for it. But there is a lot more satisfaction to be had if you learn to trust your inner voice and answer for yourself.