On 2nd and 3rd October, our CDT PGRs held a two-day conference of CDT PGR presentations at Manor House Hotel, Okehampton, following last year’s successful PGR Presentation Conference at Escot House, Ottery St Mary. The conference involved a mix of presentations and team-building activities to help cohort-bonding and to welcome in the first years.
As a student-led initiative, this event was organised by PGRs- final year PGRs James Capers and Josh Glasbey, and third year PGRs Kyle Arnold and George Braid. Below is their perspective of organising the conference:
This year’s PGR conference was held at the Manor House Hotel in Okehampton, where our 2nd and 3rd year PGRs presented their work and we welcomed the new starters. As well as the higher years getting to practise giving conference talks, there was plenty of time for activities such as curling, bowling, pool and even a pub quiz (we came 3rd!). Organising the event was a great experience: everything from finding a suitable venue to scheduling the day gave us a lot of insight into what it takes to put together a conference. The chance to chair sessions was also useful experience, as it’s not something PhD students usually get asked to do.
One of the students presenting, second year PGR Jon Smith, fed back on the experience of presenting at the conference:
The PGR conference was a great chance to practise preparing a conference-style talk and get some experience presenting my work and answering questions about it. I also got useful feedback from other PGRs that I can use to make my presentations better in the future. The talks also led to some interesting discussions about how CDT students can work together. For example, Kyle and I realised that we could work on some problems on designing impedance surfaces for antenna applications together.
And finally Eloise Lee gives her opinion on the event as a first-year PGR:
The interesting talks were a great way to find out what everyone is working on and it was a nice chance to get to know everyone in a relaxed and friendly environment. All of the activities, particularly the curling, were really fun too!
See below for more photos of this event:
