EU MSCA-ETN SOCRATES kicks off in Leuven
The MCSA ETN SOCRATES kick-off meeting took place on Wednesday 8 February 2017 at Novotel in Leuven. During the kick-off meeting, 13 newly recruited Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) presented themselves to each other, the team of supervisors, the representatives of the partner organizations, and the project management team. Two more ESRs are still in the recruitment phase and will join this team as soon as possible. It is a diverse team with 7 different nationalities (coming from Greece, India, Italy, Russia, Spain and Turkey); 6 out of the 15 ESRs are female researchers.
The participants discussed the workflow of the project and the interaction between the various work packages, clarifying all the roles and responsibilities. The importance of a clear internal and external communication was underlined. The kick-off meeting ended with an interactive session, in which the planning of the various secondments was discussed between the partners, ESRs and their supervisors. In the evening, the participants were able to get to know each other better during an informal kick-off dinner.
On Thursday, the SOCRATES ESRs met their colleagues of the newly started ETN NEW-MINE during a joint soft skill training on Intellectual Property Rights and on Literature Review and Ethics. On Friday, a site visit to the Metallo’s non-ferrous recycling plant in Beerse including their new Zinc fumer plant was combined with a S/T training on plasma metallurgy. To finish the week on a lighter note, the ESRs visited the beautiful city of Bruges.
With this four day programme, the first network-wide event allowed all participants to get to know each other and to plan the upcoming research activities.
