Ph.D. Student Council - June meeting

1. Participants
Stefano Bonetti - MP
Constantinos Giannoulis - SYSLAB/DSV
Christian Valenzuela Köhnenkamp - MP
Zhechao Wang - SC

2. Brief summary of Ph.D. students rights
We went briefly through the final draft of the document and the table jointly written together with the Ph.D. Student Chapter. The aim of these documents (that will be formatted and printed out) is to give all newly employed Ph.D. Students an overview of their rights and a first, quick, answer to the most common questions and problems. Draft of these documents will be available on this blog.

3. Report on FU committee and School board meetings.
The last week of May and the first of June, I attended the meetings of the Graduate Education Committee (FU - forskarutbilding) and of the ICT school board. The meeting with the FU committee had the aim to give an overview of the new organization of the school. Most of the informations were on the document I sent out in May, and which will be available on the blog as well. The ICT school board meeting was also an introduction to the school organization, since it was the first with the new board.

4. Planning of the Ph.D. Student Council actions.
Every member of the Ph.D. Council is welcome to contribute to the actions we decide to take. We identify an "action leader" only for organizational reasons.

a) Write down a constitution for the Ph.D. Council and an Organizational Chart of the ICT school. (Shared Google documents, Constantinos/Stefano responsible)

b) Maintenance of the blog. (Stefano/Constantinos)

c) Planning of the orientation day for Ph.D. students, that should take place at the beginning of October. (Shared Google document, Magnus, Zhechao, Pamela responsible)

d) Feedback to the FU committee about the type of information on Ph.D. studies that should be present on the school homepage. Other universities homepage can be a good source of inspiration. (Shared Google document, Christian responsible)

e) Problems to be brought at the school board level. (Stefano)

5. Next meeting
Next meeting is planned on September 2, 2009, at 13:30. Everyone is welcome to join. As already said, we would like to have at least one Ph.D. Student from each Activity Base (the newest official name, the previous was Research Group). At the moment we have people from COS (Communication Systems), ISS/DSV (Information and Software Systems), MP (Materials Physics), and SC (Semiconductor Devices). We still miss someone from ECS(Embedded Electronic and Computer Systems) and OP (Optics and Photonics)

Kista Science Seminar: Dark matter, Dark Energy and Black Holes

The ICT School recently started a set of seminars of general scientific interest, to be held ideally the last Friday of each month. The first one was given by the head of Ericsson research, showing the strategy of the company for the coming year. The second one was given by the director of the construction of the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Sweden. The third one is scheduled on Friday, May 29. You can find more information here:

http://www.kth.se/ict/kalender/seminar/1.37985

All Ph.D. students are of course very welcome to join, and you will be offered coffee and pastries before the seminar. We think that there are many good aspects with this event. First, you get to hear what is going on at the edge of the research world in different fields, which are not yours. Usually the speakers are very good delivers, so that you can actually relax and enjoy the talk. Second, the idea of the seminars is very popular in many other universities, but not so much here (yet). We think that having seminaries is a very positive thing, and if you think the same, please come and show that we, Ph.D. students, appreciate the initiative. Third, but not less important, we can use that moment to get to know each other.

Therefore, join the Kista Science Seminars!

Hello world!

We are ready to go!

PhD Student rights' table

[click on the image for full details]