The 2020 PhD Academic Event was a success
On Friday, the 28th of February 2020, the annual PhD academic event was held. This event was organized by the PhD board of the Aerospace faculty in cooperation with the Faculty Graduate School. This year the event took place at the beautiful location of Science Centre in the Mekelzalen, Delft. The goal of the event was to promote interdisciplinary discussions and cooperation within the different departments.
A total of 132 PhD candidates participated in the event. It was possible for the PhD candidates to participate in a poster presentation, a pitch competition or to do a demonstration of their research. In total the event witnessed 120 poster participants, 10 pitches and 2 demonstrations by the PhDs. During the two poster presentation rounds, all PhD candidates could vote for 3 posters they liked the most.This resulted in a first prize for Dora Klindzic, a second prize for Gijs de Rooij and a third prize for Agnes Broer in the poster category.
This year the pitch competition was serious business! In only 2 minutes the PhD candidates had to let their message come across. The professional jury, consisting of Dr. ir. Corine Meuleman, from the valorization centre, Dr. Tine Tomažič, head of R&D at Pipistrel, Prof. Dr. Henri Werij, the dean of our faculty and Nancy van Veen, secretary of the Graduate School decided for the best pitches. After carefully evaluating the pitches with respect to their presentation style, slide quality and clarity of the story, three winners were chosen: the first prize went to Dirk Van Baelen, the second prize went to Sihao Sun, and the third prize to Reynard de Vries. Last but not least, the best demonstration awards went to Bruce LeBlanc and Diana Olejnik. Additionally, the keynote speaker dr. Tine Tomažič, offered all prize winners a flight in an electric aircraft!
The poster presentation session was followed by a fantastic keynote from Dr. Tine Tomažič who provided a tantalizing story of his company Pipistrels endeavor in developing electric aircrafts. The keynote was followed by an evening with plenty drinks and snacks where the PhDs and guests had lively discussions and hopefully meaningful collaborations.
The posters, and pitch slides will now be bundled into a nice colorful booklet.
All in all, it was a successful event! Thanks to everybody for their participation.
Kind regards,
PhD board AE