Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, of BAC Consulting, has denied making the exploding pagers that killed 12 people and wounded more than 2,000 in Lebanon.
After her company was revealed to have licensed the design for the pagers from their original Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono told NBC News that she didn't make them.Since then, she has not appeared in public. Neighbours say they haven't seen her. She did not respond to messages seeking comment. Her flat in a stately old Budapest building, where a door to a vestibule had been open earlier in the week, has been shuttered.
"Good-willed, not a business type, more like someone who often tries something new, who quickly believes things and then gets enthusiastic about that," the person said, adding that Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono had been looking for income as she wanted to leave another job.
A woman living in the building for the past two years said Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono was already a resident when she moved in, and described her as kind, not loud, but communicative. "As far as I know, she has not done scientific work since then," Professor Akos Torok, a retired physicist who was one of her professors at UCL and published papers with her at the time, told Reuters by email.
That CV also described her as a former"Project Manager" at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2008-2009, who organised a nuclear research conference. The IAEA said its records indicated she had been an intern there for eight months.