Energy Conference Arranged by Students · 22. December 2011
Enterprising international students can take the credit for the series of SPOT Conferences on technical issues concerning energy which for the third consecutive year was held at the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University.
The key person behind the activities is PhD student Krisztina Leban, originally from Romania, who organized the first conference back in 2009 while she was a master’s student. At the time, the initiative originated out of a desire to make it affordable for engineering students to attend a scientific conference; costs were kept to a minimum by enlisting other students as helpers.
- I think conference participation is very important for students because you can verify that your work is meaningful and accurate, and you can share your work with others in the same discipline. You can also develop skill in presenting and explaining your work, and you have the opportunity to improve your CV when the articles connected to the conference are reviewed and included in official publications, says the enterprising Krisztina Leban.
The 2010 version of the conference enlarged the pool of potential participants via an online dimension and as a new feature this year the conference also serves as a direct linkage to the international engineering organization IEEE. Again, the proposal comes from Krisztina Leban who, besides being a PhD fellow, is also vice chair of AAU’s IEEE student organization.
Great support
The SPOT Conference also merged with the Department of Energy Technology’s own student conference. This came about with support from Birgitte Bak-Jensen, Associate Professor and Head of the Study Board, and Lasse Rosendahl, Professor and Chair of the Energy Sponsor Program that contributed prizes.
From the start, Krisztina Leban’s work as conference organizer has gotten support from Ewen Ritchie, Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Technology, and Alin Argeseanu, a lecturer at the Polytechnic University in Timisoara, Romania. But other students and staff in the department have also helped where they could:
- I've gotten fantastic support and I’m very proud that after just a few years the conference has been incorporated into the teaching at the School of Engineering and Science, and that it has been sponsored by the Energy Sponsor Program and IEEE, says Krisztina Leban.
The target audience for the conference is students from all engineering programs working with energy (electrical, thermal, mechatronics and control, as well as electronics and telecommunications). See the program for this years conference.
Further information:
• Krisztina Leban, PhD student, Department of Energy Technology, AAU, tel. +45 9940 3326, mobile +45 2339 2259
• Ewen Ritchie, Associate Professor and Project Coordinator, Department of Energy Technology, AAU, tel. +45 9940 9241
•Secretariat for the Energy Sponsor Program: Hanne Munk Madsen, tel. +45 9940 3313, and Maria Hald, tel. +45 9940 9238
