From 22-24 November 2021, the main staff of the beneficiaries, all the supervisors, and the ESRs joined the 1st annual meeting of OBERON (Opto-Biomechanical Eye Research Network) held at the historic Spanish city, Zaragoza. This is the first meeting gathering all the Ph.D. candidates and all the supervisors together.

The ESRs have different academic backgrounds according to their different research projects, including mechanics, biomechanics, optical engineering, electronic engineering, etc.  As an international research network, the ESRs involved come from different countries, using different languages, but sharing the same goal: to help create a modeling platform for human eyes, to contribute to the research of ocular health, and finish the research dream.

The coordinators introduced the whole project and the framework of the training plan. After that, each ESR presented to introduce their project and shared some information about themselves.

Supervisors gave academic seminars relate to their field, for us ESRs, it may be hard to fully understand the information contains on some slides, but they really helped to build the conception and encouraged us to lay a solid foundation and explore more .

 

           

Also, some supervisors shared basic research skills and their Ph.D. life and work-life balance skills. The method determines efficiency, always trying better methods, we are sure we will benefit from that. We believe everybody’s Ph.D. life is unique, that’s exactly part of the attractive factor of Ph.D. life, their stories encouraged us to get stronger and always hold a positive attitude on our Ph.D. training life.

Here we also shared an active network time, the ESRs are spread out across different universities, institutions, or companies, ESRs have been very active to share the life and working style of their places and expected the secondments together.

The ESRs also had a tour at city Zaragoza, spent dinner time together. They are not only academic partners but also witnesses to each other’s three years of doctoral life .

With the encouragement of the meeting, all the members will keep on working with full vitality. And we all know we can always get support from this strong team.

 

Summarized by: Elena Redaelli, Liying Feng