A group photo taken before the Thursday-evening dinner after a climb to the beautiful Piramida Hill to see the sunset.
Our third network-wide training event, NWTE3, took place in warm and beautiful Maribor, Slovenia in September 2019. The title of the event was Surface functionalization of bio-based fibre products. During the five-day event, we offered different trainings related to the topic:
- a series of lectures on surface and materials science given by the experts from our Fibrenet consortium and by an invited lecturer,
- a laboratory course with six topics related to functionalization of bio-based fibrous products with an emphasis on textiles - to which the ESRs were able to bring their own samples.
Scientific contents also included:
- Science for the public day, an open day for the public, where the ESRs presented their research and results. The event was put together by the ESRs. Thus, it had multiple advantages: The event was utilized to communicate the progress of the ESRs to the consortium and to introduce the work to the public, it boosted the visibility of the project and it also served as a transferable skills training exercise on event organization, chairing events, and presenting to audiences with different backgrounds. The event gathered together 54 participants.
- Supervisory team meetings, where each ESR met with his or her co-supervisors from the Fibrenet consortium and with the mentor appointed from the company representatives of Fibrenet. The goal was to discuss and guide the research. As the whole consortium is present in the NWTEs, these are the best opportunities to have the supervisory team meetings.
Book of abstracts
(for the Fibrenet Science for the public day)
An integral part of all our events is transferable skills training. This time we had training on personality and group dynamics in work environment and on technology transfer and project proposal writing. Furthermore, a team of Mondi-representatives discussed with the audience about career opportunities at Mondi - and at large corporations in general.
For socializing and networking, the organizing team at Maribor arranged four wonderful dinners. In the program, they had also arranged refreshing breaks and separately scheduled free time for the participants to meet and discuss.
Prior to the NWTE, we also had a two-day worksop for the ESRs titled Visibility and Data Management Workshop. The workshop consisted of short tutorial lectures to the main topics followed by discussions, team works and a demonstration.
We gathered feedback from the whole consortium regarding the event; from the ESRs, partners and beneficiaries. Following the pattern of previous NWTEs, the Maribor event was a success: The average grade for overall composition and usefulness to the participants was 4.36/5. The training got average grade of 4.30/5 and the organization a whopping 4.59/5. Also the workshop was rated high: The overall composition and benefit to participants was graded 4.41 and the training 4.64. Thank you Maribor-team for organizing a great event!
Final program for the supervisors
Program for the Science for the public day as well as the invitation to the event here