Beatriz Villarroel is the project leader for VASCO - Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations mission which looks for vanishing stars in the Milky Way as a strong signature of extraterrestrial intelligence -- or entirely new physical phenomena we do not know about yet. She finished her PhD in astrophysics at Uppsala University (Sweden), and is on her first postdoc at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). Her main research lies within Active Galactic Nuclei, especially the AGN Unification Model. She is also an enthusiastic amateur violinist.