Just before the summer break, on the longest day of the year, Sankt Hans, DTU Compute celebrated all PhD students at the yearly PhD Bazaar combined with a summer event for the entire staff.
The traditional come-together day – the bazaar - is a platform for socialising and networking with colleagues while being updated on and inspired by recent PhD research in an informal, cheerful, and supportive atmosphere.
Many researchers – including our PhD students - at DTU Compute work with AI, and during the spring they have experienced a lot of interest from the surroundings because of the chatbot ChatGPT that has spread all over the world in a short time, so nearly anyone knows something about AI.
But as Kim Knudsen, Head of PhD School at DTU Compute said, the bazaar is meant “to embrace PhD studies, but also embrace human intelligence. Keep that in mind."
In the morning programme, the PhD students competed against each other in a team challenge organised by the two PhD students Teresa Karen Scheidt and Kristoffer Linder-Steinlein with help from the PhD School; Kim Knudsen, and PhD Coordinator Sabrina Spangsdorf, among others.
Challenges like making banners with a distinctive team name, throwing a rubber boot - backwards of course, water carrying, taking creative theme photos, and writing a poem tested teamwork and creativity. The teams were also on a Mars rescue mission – a challenge written by – ChatGPT.
Before lunch and the scientific part of the day started, the students also met a special version of The Great Danish Bake Off (Den store bagedyst), where the teams should make a birthday cake with different ingredients based on how well the teams performed in the first challenges. The better, the better and easy-to-use ingredients for the teams. The race was close, the winner - Team 1 - was only one point ahead.
The afternoon programme was for all employees. First PhD Pitch sessions in three rooms where 14 students had three minutes each to present their PhD projects, followed by a poster session. The audience could vote for their favourites. Finally, the three best pitches and posters were awarded with candy.
One of the winners was Tobias Engelhardt Rasmussen, PhD student in the research section Statistics and Data Analysis. He won both the team challenge with his team and the best pitch in pitch session 2.
"The PhD Bazaar is a really good opportunity for us PhD students to get together and get to know each other across sections, which we don't usually get to do. Also, it is a great opportunity to test out presentation or poster making skills in a safe environment. Obviously, it is also fun to win!" he says.
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Look at the photos here.