3rd CREEP Workshop
9-12 October 2017 / Bad Münster Am Stein, Ebernburg Castle, Germany
The 3rd CREEP workshop was centered on the ESRs with two principal aims: to develop a better knowledge of the non-academic professional world and to develop personal and career-management skills.
Monday 9th of October, the first day of the workshop, was a special day open only to the ESRs. An external contributor, Marie-Laure Parmentier from Balpaeme Conseil, led a full-day session on “stress management”. The students were able to discuss with her about stress and time management during the PhD, but also about ways to improve their communication with the supervisors and colleages.
On Tuesday the 10th of October, Hagen Deckert from IGEM opened the session on geothermics by explaining to the participants how geothermics projects were made, from planing to production stage. This presentation was followed by a talk on “How to minimize induced seismicity in industry workflow?” by a second representative from IGEM. In the afternoon, all CREEP ESRs made an oral presentation of their ongoing research.
The morning of the third day was organized in two parts. First, a discussion session with the representatives of the industrial partners where the students asked the questions they had prepared concerning working in industry and the transition from academia to industry. Then a session on how to apply to a new position and prepare a good CV, led by Sylvie Demouchy and Suzanne Hangx, during which we discussed in detail the applications and CVs prepared by all ESRs. In the afternoon, the group left the Ebernburg castle for a visit of the SCHOTT premises (Mainz) organised by Clemens Kunisch.
The last morning of the workshop, past PhDs who are now working or have worked in industry talked about their experience: Erwin Frets, from Crystal2Plate to GDF Suez, Michael Drews, from a PhD to Conocco-Phillips and then to a post-doc position at Erlangen University, and Suzanne Hangx, from a PhD in Utrecht to Shell and back to Utrecht University as a lecturer. These presentations gave rise to a large number of interesting questions from the students. The last activity was the proposal writing training led by Boris Kaus and Andréa Tommasi. In this session, the ESRs cross-evaluated ‘fake’ post-doc proposals they prepared before the workshop. The group was separated in two review panels in which each proposal has been presented by its main reviewers and then discussed and analysed by the group.
