DTU Energy held its annual PhD symposium with industrial participation at DTU Lyngby Campus, where PhD students could discuss their research with scientists, engineers and representatives from the industry.
The 118 participants at DTU Energy’s annual PhD symposium exchanged insights into the latest research on topics as diverse as fuel cells and batteries over heatsinks and electronic memory devices to smart nano-inks for printing oxide materials and in-depth research into many kinds of energy materials, with 44 PhD-students from DTU Energy presenting their finest research and results either orally or on posters.
To the PhD students it was a day of presenting their research in a safe environment before they confront the world of scientists, and to many guests it was a fascinating glimpse of the future technologies and the trends of the research community. To some, it was not only fascinating but also a matter of money.
Industry was impressed
“I always find it very exciting to see the new trends and directions the research community moves. Yes, it is ‘just’ PhD’s and the level of research can for that reason be a little diverse, but most of the PhD’s are at the same time very engaged in their field and oftentimes they bring fresh angles and perspectives into the field, that I either try to match with our own research or become inspired by”, explained senior project manager at Siemens, Kasper Therkildsen, one of the industrial participants at the PhD symposium.
"The level of presentations at the symposium is actually higher than at many conferences, making the job of finding the best presentations a hard job"
Anders Smith, Senior Executive Communications Officer, DTU Energy
Siemens and DTU Energy currently cooperate on a project covering electrolysis of CO2, and to the Siemens-project manager it was interesting to see and get inspired by the PhD’s of his project-partner.
“Our angles are slightly different. Siemens have to earn money, while DTU mostly do research, but we have the same goal, and I found the level of expertise among the PhD’s of DTU Energy very high and promising.”
Principal Materials Researcher at Meggit Sensing Systems, Erling Ringgaard, was just as impressed. Meggit PLC is a global engineering group specializing in extreme environment components and smart sub-systems for aerospace, defence and energy markets, and they cooperate with DTU on research in oxide ceramics.
“We are not that much into fuel cells but our oxide materials are mostly the same or very similar to those of DTU and many of your analysis methods are of high value to us. This makes it very interesting to watch and follow the work and research of the PhD’s of DTU Energy”, explained Erling Ringgaard, because: “It is always good to see what’s new and up-and-coming in the field of oxides, but we also want to know the level of future researchers if we want to hire some for our projects in the future, and I personally find the level of expertise among the PhD’s really high. It is always a good fundament for more future cooperation.”
Talented PhD’s
This experience of highly talented PhD’s was shared by the other guests at the PhD Symposium and DTU Energy has statistics to prove it. Statistically, PhD students of DTU Energy deliver high-quality research and finish after 3,03 years (in 2016), which is tied for the first place compared to other DTU-departments.
The high quality made it difficult for the evaluation panels at the two oral tracks and the poster session to find the first among equals among the PhD students of DTU Energy.
“The level of presentations at the symposium is actually higher than at many conferences, making the job of finding the best presentations a hard job. It is very small details separating the frontrunners”, said Senior Executive Communications Officer at DTU Energy, Anders Smith, calling the PhD presentations for good, well-structured and of very high quality. His colleagues in the evaluation panels agreed.
In the end PhD student’s Dordije Tripkovic and Dominik Dominkovic was chosen as the best oral presenters and PhD-student Massimo Rosa won the prize for best poster presentation.