About me

The rest of this site is the work side — code, papers, talks. This page is for everything else: the things I do when I'm not staring at C++ or a fit residual plot.

In the kitchen

I follow the recipe carefully — for about the first three steps. After that I'm improvising, which usually turns out well and occasionally produces the kind of dish you don't talk about afterwards. Somewhere between rigorous and freestyle.

Lately I've been growing my own chili plants on the balcony — partly for the cooking, partly because watching something slowly produce fruit is unreasonably satisfying.

Languages, work in progress

Italian and French are native, English is the one I think and work in. Spanish and Portuguese are currently being taught to me by reggaeton lyrics, Brazilian memes, and the occasional well-meaning friend. Progress is uneven but steady.

Puzzles and games

Sudoku is the long-running habit. Chess is the new one — I'm at the stage where I can spot the blunder roughly half a second after making it. I take both seriously enough to improve, not so seriously that they stop being fun.

Code as a hobby

I "vibe-code" small apps and sites on weekends — most recently a calorie tracker I actually use. Day job used to be C++ and physics analysis, now it's credit-risk modelling — either way, when I generate something with an LLM I can read it line by line and call out the parts that look suspicious, not just hope for the best.

Science on TikTok & YouTube

For a few years I made short videos trying to make physics feel less like homework — same challenge as tutoring: find the one explanation that finally clicks, then say it in 60 seconds without lying about the details. Wound down in 2026 along with the rest of the physics chapter.

Gym

Structured routine, advanced enough to program my own training, disciplined enough to actually keep showing up. The unglamorous version of progress — small numbers going up over long periods of time.

Where I am now

Made the jump: since September 2026 I'm a Senior Consultant in Credit Risk at Prometeia, still based in Bologna. Different domain, same toolkit — statistics, simulation, and the habit of decomposing a messy problem until it stops being scary.

If you want to chat about physics, code, risk modelling, or where to eat in Bologna — drop me a line at nicola.rubini.1995@gmail.com.