The first 4TU.AMI networking event since the outbreak of the corona virus took place at the TU/e campus in Eindhoven on 5 July 2022.
Scientific director Johann Hurink opened the meeting and welcomed the 50 participants, many of which joined one of the four TUs within the past three years. Johann reminded the participants that the main purpose of the event was to get to know new colleagues, explore common research or teaching interests, and invite collaboration.
Jan van Neerven (TU Delft) was the first of two invited speakers who took to the stage. He gave an overview of the Zwaartekracht proposal TrEC (Transitions, Extremes and Climate). Apart from explaining what the proposal is about scientifically speaking, he also spoke about the interesting process of setting up such a large multidisciplinary consortium.
The second invited speaker of the day was Tracy Craig (UT). In her talk, entitled 'The importance of embedding disciplinary education research within the discipline' (slides), Tracy explained the distinction between theoretical educational research, scholarship of teaching and learning, and scholarly teaching. By discussing ways of supporting scholarly teaching and presenting examples of scholarship of teaching and learning, she effectively conveyed the message that lecturers in mathematics departments are well placed to contribute substantively to scholarship of teaching and learning, and that all teachers of mathematics should have the opportunity to become scholarly teachers.
Apart from the two invited talks, there were many short presentations. These were intended to give the research and teaching staff who recently joined one of the four TU's the opportunity to introduce themselves to the audience. (Click here for the full schedule of the event.)
Most of the short presentations had the interesting 'max. 3 minutes, no time for questions' format. Johann Hurink made sure that these sessions ran very smoothly and remained on-schedule. The fact that questions needed to be postponed led to lots of interaction during the coffee and lunch breaks.
Some participants were allocated 10-minute time slots, allowing them to describe their research or teaching interests -and collaboration possibilities- in more detail. Two of these talks, given by Mengwu Guo (UT) and Yoeri Dijkstra (TU Delft), were devoted to so-called 'Strategic Research Initiatives' (SRIs) that were recently funded by 4TU.AMI. In his 10-minute talk, Bart Besselink (University of Groningen) gave a presentation about applied mathematics in Groningen and warmly invited the participants to reach out and investigate possible ways to collaborate.
After a group photo was taken, the participants enjoyed some food and drinks in the Auditorium of the TU/e.
We look back on a very successful community building event, and we're looking forward to the next opportunity to meet our 4TU.AMI colleagues (again).
