The first Crystal Maze event connecting PhD students from the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, took place on Friday 5th of April. The goal of this unforgettable experience was to mix students from different groups and foster new collaborations within the EEE department.
The evening started with a drinks hangout at union bar where the attendants got to know about each other before the team building event. The Crystal Maze Experience was a truly interactive, frenetic and funny team challenge. Expertly guided by the Maze Master, the two teams of students journeyed through four different adventure zones: Aztec, Industrial, Futuristic and Medieval. Along the way, the teams faced lots of challenging tasks and games. Every challenge successfully completed won each team a crystal. Every Crystal earned, gave more time in the very final challenge: The Crystal Dome. Here, the teams had to work together to catch as many tokens as possible.
The event was a great success, with a big turnout of 16 students. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed building teamwork and social skills. EEE PhDs were very happy to meet new people from the department in such a fun way.
As we get closer and closer to graduation, we look forward to taking a step into the real world and work either for corporations or starting our own venture in order to reach our potential. Judging by the society we live in, connections have a great impact on our future. Events managed and produced by the GSU give such opportunities to students, allowing them to expand their horizons. One such event was the GSU connect 2019 initiative.
The event offered students the opportunity to enjoy the cross disciplinary collaboration with other students, allowing for students to benefit from different skills and expertise. The event saw 60 students from diverse backgrounds, participating in the competition. Though GSU Connect has traditionally been a networking event, this year the committee had added a twist. Students had the opportunity to present a pitch to a panel of judges as well as the audience and the winning team to win £1,000 pounds in cash. The event ran for 2 days, one exclusively to allow students to connect with peers in a professional environment and the second to allow the teams to pitch their ideas to their selective audience and judges. The panel of judges included Mr. Anouar Adham Founder of Elite Crowdfunding Ltd., Elite Assets International and Elite IRP/ Assets and Wealth Management Expert, Ms. Anca Enica Co-founder of Legacy Venture, Mr. Matthieu Burnand Manager of Solar Energy startup, MBA at INSEAD, Mr. Robert Benson an Active investor in startup businesses, Founder of Arete Consulting and Mr. William Makant. In this year’s competition, two teams had the opportunity to take home £500 each by presenting an idea that could wow the panel and the audience. This year, the winning team had a unique idea, to develop a sustainable autonomous vertical farming system based on the aeroponics technology by using a technique in AI called Reinforcement Learning. This would allow scalability for vertical farming system, as the AI can learn and adapt in any given environment given enough training. The idea won both the award from the esteemed judges as well as the audience, proving to the world just how bright the minds of the future are.
Though next year’s event will focus solely on building connections and networking, we look forward to receiving both your feedback and any suggestions on improvement. The GSU thanks it’s participants for making this event as successful as it could have been and we look forward to seeing you all again at our future events. Keep an eye out on our social media channels to get updates and information on our exciting upcoming events.
We would like to thanks the Graduate School and the Research Community Fund for their financial support and for enabling this event to take place.
by Charishma Ratnam, PhD Candidate, University of New South Wales, Australia
Introduction
It is becoming a household statistic: by 2050, 66% of the world’s population will live in cities[1]. This statistic holds much value for me as I pursue my research on migration (specifically in regard to refugees and asylum seekers) and how migrants settle in places. When I was given the opportunity to apply for the Global Fellows Programme: Cities of the Future with this year’s focus on health and well-being, this statistic resonated with me even more. The current state and future of our big cities has become contentious, and the programme was able to offer a space for interdisciplinary discussions to take place.
The Global Fellows Programme was held from June 10 to 15, 2018 at the Velodrome, Olympic Park, London, a place that saw much victory for England in the 2012 Olympics. Before arriving in London, each participant was placed in a team, and each team was allocated a theme for the week: health, mobility/transport, smart data/interconnectivity, housing, and business/infrastructure. These themes would form the framework for our project ideas and pitches. On entering the Velodrome, I was excited by the opportunity and motivation, as I saw the cyclists making their way around the track. The first day was about meeting and connecting with the group and the teams we were placed in. The most challenging task of the day: coming up with a team name. Our team (after much deliberation) settled on ‘The Lazy Foxes’! Lazy, defining some of the members of our group, and foxes, being the clever strategies and initiative we would take throughout the week. The second day tested our teamwork skills, where we undertook five fast-paced team-building exercises, followed by a period of reflection. After these team-building exercises, there were several outings that took place for the rest of the week. A few highlights included a visit to The Crystal – one of the world’s most sustainable buildings by Siemens, showcasing an exhibition about the future of cities – next to London Royal Docks, the Emirates Cable Car trip to North Greenwich where we were able to see the scale of redevelopments occurring in East London, and a visit to Imperial’s new White City campus.
After absorbing all the information delivered to us, we were left to our own devices. Although overwhelming and challenging, my team managed to come up with a concrete idea that focused on business and infrastructure. I gained important experience and knowledge from this collaborative process. Working together with other interdisciplinary, inter-institutional and international PhD researchers, academics and industry professionals meant that we learned a lot from each other. Delivering our final team pitch was a highlight for me – we were given feedback from a range of academics and industry professionals from different fields.
I would encourage PhD researchers to apply for similar professional development opportunities when they are offered. I was able to build networks, collaborations and connections with participants in the programme, and also benefit from the professional/personal development, team-building skills and interdisciplinary exchanges. I have gained a wider perspective on research that engages with the cities of our future, and I am interested in expanding on this area of concern further with the new friends, collaborators and research networks I have fostered at the Global Fellows Programme on Cities of the Future.
UNSW PhD researchers (L to R): Malshika Dias, Henrique Benites and Charishma Ratnam and UNSW Visiting Researcher Daniel Lu (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).Cycling track at the Velodrome, Olympic Park, London.View of East London redevelopments from the Emirates Cable Car from Emirates Royal Docks to North Greenwich.My team that worked on a business and infrastructure idea for the week (L to R): Stephanie Hewitt (ICL), Kahar Abula (TUM), Charishma Ratnam (UNSW), Heba Awadh (ICL), Clare Hunt (ICL), Shreyash Hadke (NTU), Mayu Sakuma (TUM), Mudussir Ayub (TUM), and Christopher Voss (TUM).
