Let’s talk about PhDs – propositions and publications, research and arguments. This February, the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) celebrates PhD Day with a look at all the work that goes into making a successful PhD.
On Thursday, February 6 2014, most of the department’s candidates will attend a day-long session with workshops, discussions and presentations of ongoing work. A number of IDE candidates are currently abroad, but sixty to seventy of them are expected to attend.
“The idea is for our PhD community to get to know each other and what all work is going on within the department. It’s also aimed at increasing collaboration and interaction among related areas of research,” explains Ellen Vroemen, Advisor Marketing and Communication, IDE.
Prior to the event, visitors are requested to fill out a form helping organizers gauge their areas of need and interest. Questions range from prompts for propositions (challenging statements intended to start discussions) to making candidates think about their research value – be it societal value, engineering value or scientific value. They are also asked to name courses that helped them the most and recommend them to fellow researchers.
On the day there will be a number of workshops, on topics such as Argumentation, Publishing Strategy and Proposition Writing. Other sessions include Designerly Ways, Working with Ethical Committee Approval, Videos as a publication format and collaboration.
For the event, candidates were each asked to make a thirty second video showcasing their research. These videos will be played through the day on PhD Day. “This was probably the bigger challenge for the candidates – to think about their research and explain it to others in a brief manner. It’s tough to be able to narrow it all down to the core into a thirty second video, especially when they’re used to thinking about it in terms of a long thesis paper,” says Vroeman. If the video quality is good, the videos will also be uploaded on the personal pages of each candidate.
The sessions are not open to members of other department and IDE students who want to participate need to register by January 31 2014 using this form. However, if you know of a similar PhD Day in any other department write to deltainternational@tudelft.nl.
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