Scientific Writing Camp attracted PhD students, including international ones, from all faculties

PhD students from different disciplines formed four teams and found common research topics. They plan to continue their collaboration in the coming months and ideally publish the results.

The two-day meeting was attended by a total of 22 PhD students, half of whom were international PhD students. "Unlike SWC in 2022, we conducted this year's SWC in English. We were also privileged to welcome an international mentor, Dr. Conor O'Carroll, a well-established PhD Academy lecturer and independent consultant on research and higher education policy. While the first edition of the Scientific Writing Camp involved 18 PhD students from three faculties and the Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies (CEET), this time all faculties and CEET were represented. We are very pleased that the awareness of this event is spreading and the number of interested PhD students is growing," said Lucie Hofrichterová, administrator of the PhD Academy.

Mentors from among experienced researchers supported the PhD students in finding the so-called research gap, designing the methodology or research goal. As in the previous camp, they included Daniela Plachá from the CEET Nanotechnology Centre. "The previous Scientific Writing Camp was already very successful, but this year we managed to remove some minor hiccups from the past and the organization was impeccable. Also, the students worked perfectly. I really like how they were able to work as a team, linking different disciplines and finding a common theme. In one of the groups there were representatives from up to five different disciplines. I think this is a really promising generation of researchers," said Plachá.

The good experience of the previous year contributed to the fact that Pavel Czernek, together with other colleagues from the CEET Nanotechnology Centre, has again registered for this year's SWC. "Based on that collaboration, a paper was written that is now under review in a well-cited journal. So, we knew what we were getting into and thought that further interdisciplinary collaboration and joint research could emerge," Czernek revealed. Young researcher from the CNT, who are working on, for example, the synthesis of nanomaterials, have teamed up with colleagues from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

On the other hand, SWC was a completely new experience for Vojtěch Koňařík from the Faculty of Economics. "I applied for the event mainly because I wanted to broaden my horizons, meet other PhD students and get to know new people. Since I am interested in interdisciplinary research, I wanted to find out what opportunities there are for greater interdisciplinary cooperation at our university and how disciplinary diversity can be applied in research," said Koňařík.

The winners were an international team of PhD students from FEI and the Faculty of Economics, who worked on the design of an e-learning application for financial decision-making education. "The solution is innovative in that it uses feedback from heart rate sensors (smartwatches) to reflect emotions when making decisions in challenging situations. It was a great opportunity for me to meet and collaborate with students from other faculties and centres across disciplines, which I consider to be the biggest benefit of the event," said Robert Šamárek, a member of the winning team.

Results:

1st place - team NeuroSheep (reward CZK 10.000/team member)

Bahate Maidiya, Jialei Xiong, Robert Šamárek, Kateřina Barnová and Martina Ládrová.

2nd place - team NanoExplorer (reward CZK 5.000/team member)

Martin Mánek, Jakub Zágora, Zuzana Vilamová, Pavel Czernek, and Štěpán Pravda

Shared 3rd place - teams EcoMarkEngee Group and WasteAters (CZK 2.000/team member)

Hamed Afsoobiria, Khaled Mohamed, Musenda Oscar Kambole, Thi To Loan Nguyen, Vendula Prokopová, and Kristýna Stromská, Dominik Jursa, Marek Miškay, Radoslav Gandel, Vojtěch Koňařík, and Markéta Vašinková.