Sunday 29 January 2017

TRUSS 2nd Training Week at UPC-BarcelonaTech


Hey everyone!



How is everything going? Handling this cold weather alright? Well, here in Barcelona it has been quite different from the sunny and warm days that you would associate with this city.
That was what my fellow ESR colleagues and rest of the TRUSS members discovered last week when they were here for the 2nd training week of our project. That's right, last week we had almost every member of our research group attending this event and that's what I'm going to describe you on this month's post.

Firstly, since I didn't write about the 1st conducted training week (it preceded the first post on this blog, you can read all about it here), I probably should explain to you what are these training weeks and their role within our research project. As I've mentioned in previous posts, TRUSS, as it stands for Training in Reducing Uncertainty in Structural Safety, is an innovative training network that brings together an intersectoral and multidisciplinary collaboration between academia and industry in order to conduct innovative research on the topic of structural safety. Part of this is achieved by providing to the 14 fellows local and network-wide training activities. It's in this last one, that these training weeks have a role. It basically consists of core (research methods and business skills), specialist and communicational skills modules given to the early stage researchers enabling us to improve the quality of our research and receive important and valuable training that will better prepare us towards our future career paths, either in academia or industry. You can learn more about the structure and objectives of this type of activities in this link.

In this training week, at Barcelona, it was no different. This training week was held at the north campus of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya from the 16 to the 20 of January. We ESR's had a full and productive week, where we received training in technical areas such as "Multi-Level Monte Carlo Methods for stochastic analysis and robust optimum design", "Vulnerability and Risk Assessment",  "Reducing Uncertainty in Structural Safety through Static Non Destructive Tests", "Observability Techniques for Uncertainty Reduction", "Survival Analysis and Discrete Event Simulation applied to Structural Reliability", "Reducing uncertainty through the Structured Expert Elicitation", "Uncertainty Quantification and propagation for sensitivity or reliability purpose", "Practical Reliability Engineering - Case Studies" and "Advanced Finite Element Modelling".

ESRs attending training on technical modules


We also received training on Research Methods such as "Knowledge management: The path to innovation" and "Responsible conduct in research and innovation".

Moreover, each ESR made a presentation on the progress of their research and respective project as it happens in all of these meetings. This was followed by the usual Doctoral Studies Panels where feedback is given to each ESR by external advisors in form of advice and comments regarding the project evolution and its next actions. This is an excellent opportunity for the evaluation of the situation point of each project and to assess if different paths should or not be taken.

Presenting my Research Progress in this 2nd Training Week
But don't worry, not everything was work. We also had time for leisure moments. We had the opportunity to take a cultural and technical visit to one of the most important (if not the most) landmarks in Barcelona: Sagrada Familia! Here we received a presentation of the history and situational point of this incredible structure by project architect Jaime Serrallonga. Afterward, we had a guided visit where we were able to contemplate and admire this sublime monument.


TRUSS members in guided visit to Sagrada Familia
So, as you can imagine this was an incredibly fun and enjoyable week where it was possible to continue to develop important technical and communicational skills and also appreciate the company of all my fellow ESR colleagues in the marvelous city of Barcelona.

Now it's time to get back to work since a lot of tasks are due in these next few months. In the next post I will get back to you with more information regarding my project, so please stay tuned.

Cheers!