The PhD Day
The first day of our gathering was arranged by and for the PhD students only. This year they wanted to focus on team-building activities and doing something together. The day was therefor spent on a guided scenery and wildlife boat trip on the fjords surrounding Tromsø. The students reenacted famous geology movies, made PhD comics and much more along the way.
Excellent arena for scientific networking and exchange of on-going research
After traveling along the snow covered landscape for an hour with snow falling heavily outside the bus, we all arrive safe at Sommarøy Arctic Hotel. The scenery is breathtaking and the hotel safe and warm. We start out with an introduction of our four key speakers Whitney Behr, Clare Warren, Sumit Chakraborty and Jörg Hermann, getting to know why they got interested in geology in the first place and how they got to where they are today. During the next two days we will hear a talk from each of them and have good time for discussions afterwards led by host and DEEP board member Holger Stunitz.
The talks were great!
Reaching out with research findings and ideas
The PhD students contributed with presenting posters of their current research projects at the assembly. As a part of the research training they were given general feedback and advice on what to keep in mind when creating and presenting research on posters by an evaluating committee consisting of Clint Conrad (UiO), Christine Fichler (NTNU) and Jiri Konopasek (UiT). The students Åse Hestnes (UiB), Sebastian Wolf (UiB) and Eivind O. Straume (UiO) won the prizes of respectively 5000, 3000 and 2000 NOK for the best poster presentations.
When asked about the most educational experience at the general assembly, the PhD students answered:
To feel free and confident to initiate a discussion or speech with someone who I never met before.
The talks were very good and also the discussions after.
Meeting the other PhD´s to learn what they are working on.
The next General Assembly
Next year’s general assembly will be hosted by Stephanie Werner in the Oslo area. The exact venue and time of the next general assembly in spring 2020 will soon be announced.
The Norwegian Research School DEEP
Norwegian Research School for Dynamics and Evolution of Earth and Planets (DEEP) is a national initiative and involves all major national institutes educating PhD students within the fields of dynamics and evolution of the earth and planets.
The school is managed by the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED), a CEO hosted by Dept. of Geosciences, UiO.