It ApPEARS to be time for Networking!
The pandemic certainly threw a spanner in the works for the training events planned for Darmstadt and Paris in 2020. Although some of the planned training was conducted virtually, the networking and hands-on exercises were deeply missed. Late November 2021, it was finally time to meet in-person again when Fraunhofer and CNAM invited us to Darmstadt in Germany and Paris in France.
Networking was a significant part of the programme and the hosts had
facilitated for this in several events. One of the first stops in Germany was a visit to the Formnext exhibition in Frankfurt, where you could meet and interact with many people and companies from the Additive Manufacturing market. Furthermore, a visit to Stratasys in Rheinmünster, the leading company for 3D solutions and a partner organization of ApPEARS was on the programme.
This was a great opportunity to meet people outside academia working in the field of 3D printing, and ESR 15 Riccardo Tonello found the visits very insightful: – “I had a look not only at the state of the art of what is out there, but I also gained an understanding of what the limits are, the needs and the niches of different technologies. It also gave me inspiration on how to plan further work”, he says. ESR 1 Majid Ansari-Asl also found the visits in Germany interesting, especially seeing how they develop new 3D imaging systems in academia before selling it to the industry and other customers caught his attention, as this is closely related to the research he is currently working on in ApPEARS.
The programme in Paris offered a visit to the industry as well, namely Mihaly the 2.5D printing company. However, it was metrology that was in focus during the training in France. At CNAM the PhD students followed lectures in metrology in addition to doing hands-on calibration of monochromators. The fellows also got insight to the history of metrology and metrological devices when visiting the museum of CNAM and their laboratory. For Majid, this vas a valuable experience as he links it to his own project “We are developing a new imaging system inspiring from metrological devices and it was of great value to see how the original devices work”, he says.
Social events
During the stay in Germany and France, it was also time for socialising and cultural events. Together with another MSCA ITN project called EVOCATION that took part in the training programme in Germany, the weekend trip went to the popular travel destination Heidelberg and the day after to Auerbacher Schloss. In Paris, most PhD fellows went for a bicycle trip around Paris. All in all, both Riccardo and Majid agree it was an insightful event inspiring for further work on their PhD projects that are entering a nal phase. Thanks to Philipp Urban at Fraunhofer and Gaël Obein at CNAM that hosted the group and organised the events.