Smartincs Training School 1 was supposed to be organised in and around Delft in The Netherlands. As many other events and activities the Training school was moved into an online happening and everyone was joining from their own home across Europe through TEAMS.
In the TS 1 we had all 15 ESRs participating and we had 16 Lecturers presenting and discussing all the topics. We had an additional 125 people from Universities and Industry following all or part of the lectures during the week through a live-stream. Thank you all for joining us! All lectures are recorded and can be accessed through the Smartincs YouTube channel. Feel free to consult these online trainings.
The topics of Training School 1 were dealing with the soft-skills Presentation and Scientific writing on the first day and the more hard core science of fracture, testing, upscaling, microscopy and using NDT on the second day. The third day was devoted to self-healing, general methods and testing of healing performance, bacterial healing and modelling schemes for designing and optimising self-healing. Day 4 was the concrete day, in which the participants got trained in tricks for making ‘perfect’ concrete. The last day was reserved for a company visit to Concrefy where we were all treated with a very nice virtual tour inside their lab-facilities and of the type of research they perform.
During the TS, the ESRs had to work in groups on an assignment in which they had to prepare a plan for repairing and preserving the 50 year old Leca swimming pools in Portugal. On Friday the groups had to present their plans to the supervisors in the project. This turned out to be a successful item in the training school. The presentations were of very high quality and the ESRs could practice the freshly learned presentation skills and also apply all the technical knowledge on SH-techniques, testing and modelling that was taught in the TS.
The final hours of the TS were a social gathering in the online virtual Smartincs pub in which we could enjoy a drink and a pub-quiz with questions on the Smartincs-cities, local food, self-healing and the origin, shoe-size and musical talents of the ESR’s.
The TS ended with a TS-Dinner, which also was online of course. Everybody made their own favourite food, shared recipes and photos and had dinner together while chatting through TEAMS.
Some reactions from our ESRs
“Excellent program with a wealth of knowledge about concrete science. The speakers were very professional and knowledgeable” – Harry Hermawan, ESR 4
"Great expansion of knowledge outside of the area of my PhD that can be used in the near future for research and industrial work" - Priya Arul Kumar, ESR 7
"I have particularly appreciated the industrial contributions; i.e. emphasising the practical feasibility and possible challenges of implementing a new technology into the real-life construction field" - Gabriele Milone, ESR 9
"An important positive aspect of the training school was that all lectures were presented in a way that even students with another master than structural or civil engineering, could grasp the main idea" - Sina Sayadi Moghadam, ESR 5
"A well structured and practical course, in which we applied the acquired knowledge for business use: by proposing self-healing solutions to the Leica swimming pool case presented at the end" - Lais Bandeira Barros, ESR 15
"At the end of training school, Erik Schlangen, the organizer of the event, prepared a funny PubQuiz and online dinner. We could cook our dinner in front of the camera. That led to a nice and friendly area and all of us were being more familiarized with each other" - Pardis Pourhaji, ESR 12
"The TS1 was important because it presented a set of practices and theory that will be useful to improve the performance of each ESR, opening our field of vision for alternatives in facing challenges throughout the research, developing skills that meet the expectations of managers and above all preparing us to perform our activities with excellence within our research topic" - Suelen de Rocha Gomes, ESR 6
"The recorded videos are available at the SMARTINC YouTube channel. Great idea that allows the participants to look back and others to learn online" - Kiran Dabral, ESR13