ECCOMAS Young Investigator Activities

The ECCOMAS Young Investigators Committee (EYIC) has been created in order to promote the main goals of ECCOMAS among young researchers and to encourage activities of young ECCOMAS members. One of the main goals of EYIC is to create exciting and unusual event formats at the major ECCOMAS conferences.

We are therefore very pleased to invite you to participate in the activities listed below. These events are restricted to registered participants to the ECCOMAS congress. They are all dedicated to young investigators (less than 40 years old), other than the Arts & Science contest, which is instead available to every participant without age restrictions.

EYIC Career Forum

The ECCOMAS Young Investigators Career Forum is a unique networking activity, during which young researchers will have the opportunity to interact in small groups with scientists at different career stages to gain essential insights into the academic application process and receive tips for their next career steps. Relevant topics include, e.g.:

Career strategies and requirements for young researchers
Challenges in the scientific working environment
Compatibility of family and career
Work-life balance
How to prepare for an interview
Scientific proposal writing

The career forum will take place during the regular program of the congress. To register, please use the link here. Please note that there are a limited number of available spots (first come, first served). For any questions, please contact Dave Kammer (dkammer@ethz.ch), Renate Sachse (renate.sachse@tum.de), or Øystein Klemetsdal (oystein.klemetsdal@sintef.no).

EYIC ARTS&SCIENCE CONTEST

The Arts and Science Contest aims to show science in all its beauty and elegance, by visualizing scientific works with an artistic point of view. Topics cover the broad fields of mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science.

The competition is open to every participant to the ECCOMAS congress. To participate in the contest, fill the form at this link https://forms.gle/Lsf5Gbt8h4HFZV3Q8 by Sunday May 5, 2024 (11:59pm Central Europe Time). You will need to upload:

an artistic visualization (picture, rendered image, painting, drawing) of your research work (either experiment or numerical simulation). Accepted formats are .png, .jpg, with approximately square format (instagram-ready), resolution at least 300 ppi and max size 20 MB.
a title (max 5 words)
short description of the image (max 200 char space included, text only)
your Instagram username (optional)
proof of registration to the ECCOMAS congress

And to agree to a copyright statement in which you certify that you have the rights to redistribute the visual that you are submitting.

Note that a Google account is required to fill the form above. If you don’t have one and you prefer not to open one, send all the items in the list above via email to eccomas.yic@gmail.com. In the text of the email, include the following copyright statement: “I hereby certify that I have the rights to redistribute the image that I am submitting to the EYIC Arts & Media contest within the ECCOMAS Congress at Lisbon (June 3-7, 2024).

The Young Investigators Committee will do a first selection of the best 40 pieces of art. These 40 visuals will be divided into 4 groups of 10 visuals, and each week one group will be uploaded on the ECCOMAS Instagram page (one post per visual - you will be tagged in the post if you have specified your Instagram username during the submission process), starting on Monday, May 6.

At the end of each week we will close the voting for the current group and the two visuals with the most likes will be put in the final short-list. The Young Investigators Committee will choose the final winner of the contest.

The winner will be awarded a free registration for an ECCOMAS thematic conference or short course of their choice in 2025. The free registration can also be transferred to a colleague in case the winner cannot use it.

For further information, contact Lorenzo Tamellini (tamellini@imati.cnr.it), Ivan Fumagalli (ivan.fumagalli@polimi.it), or Laura Scarabosio (L.Scarabosio@math.ru.nl)

EYIC JUNIOR WORKSHOP

This junior workshop aims at providing introductory thematic lectures for young investigators within a relaxed and familiar atmosphere to foster interactive discussions between the attendees and the lecturers. Therefore, four invited experts, along two sessions, will give lectures on interesting topics related to the congress. The two sessions will take place during the regular parallel sessions of the conference programme, on Tuesday, 04/06/2024, from 14:30 - 16:30 and from 17:00 - 19:00.

The list of speakers is:

Tuesday, 04/06/2024, 14:30 - 16:30
Anna Pandolfi, Politecnico di Milano
Ludovic Noels, Liège Université

Tuesday, 04/06/2024, 17:00 - 19:00
Miguel Bessa, Brown University
Lisa Prahl Wittberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

We are looking forward to great lectures and to seeing many active young researchers within the EYIC Junior Workshop! To register and to stay informed, please fill the registration form.

For any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Sonja Hellebrand (sonja.hellebrand@uni-due.de), Albertino Arteiro (aarteiro@fe.up.pt) or Ioannis Kalogeris (ikalog@mail.ntua.gr).

ECCOMAS PHD OLYMPIAD

The 14th ECCOMAS PhD Olympiad will be organized in the framework of the ECCOMAS Congress.

The ECCOMAS PhD Olympiad, organized every year, aims at presenting the best PhD theses defended during the previous year. Every affiliated National or Regional Association of ECCOMAS is represented by a number of selected PhDs submitted for consideration for the two ECCOMAS PhD Awards.

The local organizers of the Olympiad are responsible for this process including the decision on the number of participants of the Olympiad and the inquiry of the member associations. Free registration for the conference at which the Olympiad will be held will be offered to all the finalists of the ECCOMAS best PhD thesis award.

During the congress there will be special PhD Olympiad sessions during which the presentations will be evaluated by an evaluation committee.

The two best presentations will be awarded.

In assessing the quality of the presentations, the evaluation committee should explicitly take into account the following attributes:

quality of the talk
clarity of the slides
communication to the audience
scientific interest
reference and credit to works of others

For any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Konrad Perzynski (kperzyns@agh.edu.pl) or Paulina Stempin (paulina.stempin@put.poznan.pl).

ECCOMAS YOUNG INVESTIGATORS MINISYMPOSIUM

The ECCOMAS Young Investigators Minisymposium is organized by young investigators for young investigators. The format, which has been first introduced at the ECCOMAS Congress 2016 with great success, is quite different from the regular minisymposia in order to particularly attract young researchers.

There are three possibilities for presentations:

Presentations in pairs. Two presenters prepare and submit their abstract together, and they also give the presentation together – whether as a “duet” or more as a “duel” is up to you. The two presenters should know each other but should ideally not work at the same institution. The idea is to view a topic from two different perspectives, thus leading to discussions on pros and cons or complementarity of the presented approaches. Presentations in pairs are allowed 1.5 times the time of regular talks.
Presentation of things that did not work (as expected). This session is dedicated to those works which did not work or led to different outcomes than expected. This gives the chance to present “negative” results. Authors should discuss why things went “wrong” with the aim to prevent others from falling into the same traps.
Presentation of open/unsolved problems. The main idea of this scientific format is to present a problem that you have been working on for quite some time, but for which you could not yet find a good solution. This gives the chance to present “unfinished” work and to get valuable input from an audience full of “fellow sufferers”. Authors should give a clear and comprehensive introduction to their unsolved problem, but allow for more time than usual to interact with the audience and to discuss new ideas and suggestions.

The minisymposium is organized by: Simone Morganti, Enrique Nadal, Bastian Oesterle, Konrad Perzynski, Carina Schwarz, Lorenzo Tamellini.