Board game night (15 October)
SGD dating (next: 23 June)
Last online board games night (next: 23 July)
The DWG is happy to invite you to our board game night! The next online edition will take on the 21st of May, from 19:00 onwards.
DWG Breakfast (April 30th, 9:00-11:00)
Dispositional mindfulness is a protective factor against emotional distress and a training in mindfulness has been shown to improve emotional well-being in a wide range of populations. What is mindfulness, how does it work and is there an easy way to implement it in our daily life? Can it be helpful to cope with Covid-19 related stress and anxiety? On Friday April 30th the Doctoral Working Group invites you to participate in our breakfast ZOOM-session. After an interactive seminar, there will be time for questions to the speaker (Katleen Van der Gucht).
Post PhD career event
Wondering which career path to take after your PhD? Join our session and ask the experts! On Friday march 5th the Doctoral Working Group invites you to participate in our post-phd career ZOOM-session. We have invited several speakers to talk about their career choices, from entrepreneurs to professors. After a short introduction you can ask them everything.
We invited 4 speakers who all did a PhD in the past. After receiving the ‘Doctor’ title they all walked their own career path. We have the testimony of a founder of a spin-off (Maarten, comproved), an expert / employee at Sweco (Annelies Kuleuven), a monitor / movement scientist (Sofie, KULeuven campus Bruges) and an experienced Post Doc (Jonas, KULAK).
Circular Bootcamp (9-11 December)
The TRANSUNIV Interreg project launches the 3rd edition of the Innovation Brainstorm and Bootcamp, where a group of 30 PhDs will work together with companies and non-profit organisations. This year’s topic is Circular Economy. The goal of this “Circular Bootcamp” is to set up concrete collaborations between universities, companies and public or private institutions in the region Flanders-Wallonia-France.
more information at https://circularbootcamp.eu/en/
Online DWG breakfast (10 April)
International dinner (March 11)
“The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people”
The DWG is organizing the next edition of International Evening (with locals and internationals), the event will be on 11th March 2020, at StuHu (Alma) from 18:00 until 24:00. The evening is about Cultural exchange. If you are comfortable, you can wear your traditional cloth, bring food or drinks.
Proost to Science @ Bruges (February 12)
Proost to science is a social event that brings PhDs and postdocs of both Bruges and Kulak campuses together in a non-work environment. In this event, researchers from different disciplines at both campuses present their work in an accessible way to colleague researchers in a nice local bar.
registration and more information here!
Past events
- 13th of January: pilot of ReproducitibiliTea
- 17th of January: Board game night DWG
Karaoke Night (18 October)
There will be soft drinks, beers, and snacks for sale (CASH ONLY).
Come and sing as a group or solo, or just come and enjoy some good tunes! Everything goes!
And remember: There are no bad singers!
International board game night (6 November, 18.30)
Lunch breaks (July-August)
Summer is here. Exciting times for those going on holidays, lonelier days for the colleagues still at work… So, DWG – the Doctoral Working Group – comes to the rescue. Once a week a gathered lunch break / activity is organised. Day, time and place – somewhere at Kulak campus – are announced on the DWG Facebook page each Friday the week before.
PhD Breakfast (18 June, 08.30)
International dinner (24 May, 18.00)
International beer (Thursday nights, 18.30)
- Every 1st Thursday of the month at 18.30 (unless there’s a Kulak/KU Leuven event)
- In den Herberg “Oud CortrycK”, Wijngaardstraat 10, 8500 Kortrijk
Board games night and after work drink (14 March, 17.00)
The DWG and the staff activity members are happy to invite you to a follow-up edition of the board games night!
This year, this evening will take place together with the after work drink on Thursday 14th of March, starting from 17.00 PM. You are welcome at the room next to Alma (STUHU), where the bar is, for a night of board game fun with your colleagues. We will provide a range of board games, from the classics to trending new games. Feel free to stop by and make sure to bring along your own favorite board games from home.
In case you are hungry, hotdogs will be provided.
Subscription is not needed for this activity!
Proost to Science (11 December)
Three KU Leuven Campus Kulak researchers tell you all about what their research is about in a fun and compelling way. Come and discover what your colleagues do all day while you sit back and enjoy a drink.
WITH
Jonas Deré (Mathematics)
How do we know the shape of the planet we are living on? Of course, nowadays we can just take pictures of planet Earth via satellites, so it is clear that we live on a sphere without holes. But what about the snake in the (already old-fashioned) game of ‘Snake’, does it live on a sphere as well? We will present a few methods on how to determine the shape of planets, where we only need a pencil and a ruler!
Hannelore Franck (History)
Those who are healthy need to work! There would be money enough for the poor if only the profiteers were excluded! Only those who deserve it, should receive support from the government! Sound like contemporary political statements? Well, they are actually ideas from sixteenth century reformers who wanted to change the poor relief system in Europe. They thought that the existing system encouraged laziness and preferred an efficient and strict system of support. In this talk, you’ll discover whether or not the reformers were right and if they succeeded or failed.
Kim Martinod (Medicine)
How is it that the same blood cells that help to keep you alive can also kill you? Neutrophils are one of your immune system’s first lines of defense against infection. Circulating in your blood at all times, they are ready to be called to action at any moment. They’re good at eating and neutralizing bacteria and other invaders, but when an infection is too much for them to handle then spit out long strands of DNA called Neutrophil Extracellular Traps. These “NETs” try to trap and kill pathogens, but end up catching platelets and other blood cells and forming blood clots, depriving your tissues of much needed oxygen and nutrients. We now know that this can happen even in the absence of infection, so we are trying to understand the triggers for this process and how it can be targeted to prevent thrombosis and tissue damage. By the end of this talk you’ll understand a new, dark side of the immune system.
PhD Breakfast (6 June 2018)
At this event we introduced our group and gave an overview of past DWG activities and of our plans for the upcoming academic year. At the same time the breakfast provided the opportunity to know you better and to find out what your needs are as PhD student or post-doctoral researcher at Kulak and at the Bruges campus. This will allow us to be even more effective as a working group.
We got lots of useful input from the interesting brainstorm session on research validation and we are more motivated than ever to maintain our lively community of PhD’s and postdoc’s at Kulak and campus Bruges.
Many thanks to those who helped organizing and of course to all of you participating!
From PhD to CEO? Bridging the gap between academia and industry (7 May 2018)
On 7 May, the DWG organized the second edition of its panel talk with PhD holders who have made the transition from academia to industry. First, the panel members were asked to briefly introduce themselves. Afterwards they replied to several statements/questions from their own experience. These statements and questions mainly focused on how they experienced this transition, but also on the importance of the ‘soft skills’ that they acquired during their doctoral program. A small reception was held to close off the evening.
SPEAKERS|
Steven Vandekerckhove defended his PhD in Physics on 30 September 2016 at Kulak with his dissertation on “Simulatie van golfvoortplantingsproblemen voor automatische identificatie van materiaalparameters en defecten”. He is now working as Big Data Analist at Renson Ventilation in Waregem.
Kelly Verheyen defended her PhD in Mathematics in 2009 at Kulak with her dissertation on “Anosov diffeomorphisms on infra-nilmanifolds modeled on a free nilpotent Lie group”. She is currently actuary in Non-Life Insurance & Domain Lead Product Pricing at Belfius Insurance.
An Schrijvers defended her PhD in Political Sciences in 2007 at UGent with her dissertation on “Poland and the European Union. The Europeanization of the Polity, Politics and Policies. A political analysis of the accession process of Poland into the European Union”. She is now working at the Department of Economy, Science and Innovation (EWI) as Advisor Innovation Procurement.
Proost to Science (18 April 2018)
On 18 April, the DWG organized the first edition of Proost to Science with a huge success! Thank you very much to all the attendees and to our three amazing speakers! We really hope that today you know a little bit more about algorithms, micro-algae, and single case designs.
The concept of this half-social-half-academic event is simple: sharing in an accessible and enjoyable way the research that is being done at Kulak! We switch up the seminar room for a laid-back bar called ‘The Lab’ (Budastraat, 10, Kortrijk). With a tasty drink in had three awesome speakers willing to share their research with us, and between their talks we provided some time for questions and discussions (and to grab another drink).
PROGRAM |
18.30. Presentation of the event and time to grab your first drink.
18.40. Hans Degroote. PhD student at the Department of Computer Science.
“Learning where to spend your evenings: a machine-learning approach”
Suppose you have to make a choice, and you know you will have to keep making similar choices in the future. For example, you arrive to a new city, and every evening you have to choose in which bar you will take your goodnight beer. The classic approach would be to try each bar and then pick your favourite, perhaps aided by the recommendations of friends. However, the quality of a bar changes from night to night, and perhaps you caught your would-be favourite bar on a particularly bad night. If you never give it a second chance, you will never know how many amazing nights you are missing. In this talk we will discuss an alternative approach, where there is no clear separation between learning which bar is best and enjoying the fruits of your newfound knowledge. We will focus on how to efficiently trade-off the two conflicting goals of confidently learning which bar is best and minimising the regret of spending boring evenings. By the end of my talk you will have accidentally understood some important concepts in machine learning.
19.10. Lies Declercq. PhD student at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences.
“When less is more: Statistics on a whole new level.”
Statistically analyzing statistical analyses? This is not merely a tongue twister, no, but a research field of its own. When encountering heterogeneous research evidence, so-called meta-analysts try to come up with explanations for the variation and – ideally – with an overall conclusion that fits all. To do so, they need a specific set of statistical tools. Combining evidence from multiple studies leads to new possibilities (bigger sample sizes!) but also poses new difficulties. In this talk we will explore the concept of a meta-analysis and how it can help to generalize results found in multiple smaller case studies.
19.40. An Verfaillie. PhD student at the Department of Chemical Engineering.
“Green Magic Hats.”
Everyone having an aquarium or pond will agree upon this: during summer microalgae are blooming, and for sure you want to get rid of these slimy nasty green carpet floating, preventing the nice view on your beautiful fish! But these green microalgae are worth a lot more than you would ever imagine! They played a prominent role in the past and will in the future! Microalgae are green magic hats, you can get almost all daily products out of algae, the only thing you need is a spell to get it out!
International Evening (23 February)
Over the last couple of years, the presence of international PhD students and Post-Docs around the campus has increased notably. It would be a pity not to take advantage of this opportunity to learn a little bit more about the traditions and habits of other countries! Therefore, the Doctoral Working Group and the Staff Events team organised the first edition of the International Evening.
On Friday 23rd of February, starting from 6.30 PM at the Corona, several internationals served typical food from their countries from all over the world (Spain, Italy, Mexico, USA, Thailand, Sweden, Vietnam, Iran, Finland, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, Palestine, China, France and Taiwan) and explained a little bit more about their traditions!
Board games night 2017
On Thursday 14th of December, 17 colleagues gathered in StuHu until 22.00h for a night of board game fun. Some 20 board games were available, from the classics to trending new games (Dixit, Jungle Speed, Love Letters, UNO…).
BARCO PhD event
(Image: Copyright Cordeel)
On 20 November, PhD students and Postdocs with affinity to electronics and software visited the Barco site.
| PROGRAM
► 09h00: Welcome
► 09h15-10h00: Key-note speaker Tom Kimpe, Vice president technology and innovation
► 10h00 – 10h30: Guest speakers
- Abigail Swillens (PhD), NPI Project manager
- Frédérique Chesterman (PhD), sr. research engineer
► 10h30 – 10h45: Break
► 10h45-12h00: Visit Experience Center (Demo tours)
► 12h00-13h30: Network lunch
Kulak on Ice
On 15 November 2017, we went iceskating at the Finlandia ice rink in Gullegem. Everyone made it out alive – and without broken bones!
Trip to (Campus) Bruges
On 6 October 2017, we visited Bruges to have a tour around the brand new campus in Bruges and to get to know our PhD and postdoc colleagues. We enjoyed a nice lunch, followed by a walking tour through the beautiful city center of Bruges, guided by DWG’s own Hannelore Franck (History).
Weekly summer lunches
The DWG organizes weekly lunchbreaks during the summer.
Belgian night
The perfect occasion to learn more about Belgian culture (how many governments does one country really need), dialects, french fries (a.k.a. frituur) and of course Belgian beer. Everything you need to know to become a Belgian native!
Board games night
A night of board game fun with colleagues. A range of board games are provided, from the classics to trending new games.
Doctoral Working Group 