École Polytechnique’s EuroTech Postdoc2 Brings Together Postdocs From Across Europe
As part of the EuroTech Postdoc2 program, l’X invited all postdoctoral researchers participating in the program to get together from April 17-21, 2023, on its campus to meet each other, exchange on their respective research projects and gain additional skills for their future career thanks to several workshops.
Host and co-host supervisors at two different Eurotech universities
Part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellowships and co-funded by EU’s Horizon 2020, the EuroTechPostdoc2 program has been developed by the EuroTech Alliance’s six partner universities* to support collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects across the alliance. Within the EuroTech Postdoc2 program, the partners attributed over seventy grants to postdoctoral researchers who have already demonstrated excellence and potential in their research field.
Enabling each postdoctoral candidate to work with a host and a co-host supervisor at two different Eurotech universities, the program offers a truly international research experience.
Among the participants are also three postdoctoral researchers who conduct their EuroTech Postdoc2 fellowship at École Polytechnique, with co-supervision by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL): The research project of Erik Maikranz, a postdoc in the Hydrodynamics laboratory (LADHYX), studies the “Measuring antibiotic susceptibility in droplets: From single cells to populations”. Fatema Mohamed Saeed’s research examines “Excitons in novel one-dimensional materials”. She does her postdoc fellowship at École Polytechnique’s Irradiated Solids Laboratory (LSI). Finally, Chenxi Gu, a Leprince Ringuet Laboratory (LLR) postdoc, conducts his research project on “Fixed-Target physics at LHCb”.
Workshops and exchange
In addition to inviting all EuroTech Postdoc2 fellows to meet and discover each other’s research projects, the five-day boot camp also included several workshops. Two of them were dedicated to critical socio-environmental challenges – Climate and Gender equality – inviting to reflect on these crucial topics and providing the participants with additional tools, such as methods to deal with potential gender equality arising within a research team, for example. Focused on coaching, a third workshop provided valuable tools for supervising students and PhD candidates. Furthermore, a workshop on scientific communication offered useful tips on how researchers can use LinkedIn to expand their professional network.
But the boot camp was not all hard work. The participants also had the opportunity to engage in a laser run and to visit several laboratories, the School’s Drahi X-Novation center, dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship, and the “Cité des Sciences” in Paris.
*The six EuroTech partner universities are: École Polytechnique (L’X), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and Technical University of Munich (TUM).